Workbox Adjustments

So, I had this notion the other day...my workboxes need relabeling. I had a lot of reaction to my One Year Later post about workboxes where I basically detailed how our family uses them- at that time we'd been using them for a year. The major outcome there is that we use our workboxes by subject and they do not rotate around. So, for us, the workboxes are a place for us to keep our things tidy and all together. I decided it would be great to remove the numbers and replace them with what we store in the boxes!

I bet some of you will find these numbers and activity cards very familiar! I grabbed freebie shared downloads from Jolanthe and Carisa....and really never used them much because we don't use the schedule cards. Those are great resources though if you do use the cards.

Here we go- notice that the new labels were made on white cardstock and then I added color with a marker before I laminated them. I have a different color for each child.

We have all the regular subjects for the day- math, FIAR (Unit Study), Geography, Language Arts, Nature Study, Spelling, History (for our weekly strand of world history we dabble in...I'm afraid I don't make a great poster child for the classical homeschool movement!) among other things.

R10's sewing box- this would fall into passion pursuits which happen in the afternoons. This is a box full of felt and patterns for some felt food.

I took the liberty of creating some new ideas like the Math Challenge! This is for puzzles and other exercises that will provide a bit of a challenge for the kids in addition to their regular math for the day. Great stuff to add to the math journal. I also have a Word Challenge box that will be for the occasional dictionary exercise.

There were leftovers! Can you imagine? I labeled all 12 boxes for each child easily (with the exception of J5- his were a bit harder at the end) and had ideas leftover. So, I can change them out. If I want E12 to have time with our NXT, then I take off the computer programming label and put up the NXT one. This will help to focus his efforts after formal schooling is finished for the day.

Many of us have modified this system to meet our needs. At this point, ours are no where near the original system, but I am thankful to have a space for our school things to collect. They are available when we need them and it gives my kids some independence on organizing their school items which is important. It also gives me an easy way to provide materials for some passion pursuit and extra practice time. Some down sides to the system- in our basement they require frequent dusting/vacuuming since I can't use the lids! The small width boxes bend up the items in the box or are tough to fit. This is likely not as much of an issue for those of you who rotate things out frequently.

How are you using your Workboxes? Are they still a useful tool for your homeschool?