This week, I have been reading carefully through “Sue Patrick’s Workbox System: A User’s Guide” once again. It seems that ever since buying the book, I have taken it out and referred to it numerous times. I love the system, but have not felt that I have used it as effectively as I could be. There are so many ideas and tips throughout the book that I had either overlooked or thought to be unnecessary. I now understand why she states that people should try it her way first.
One of the aspects that I hadn’t given much thought to was the schedule. The workboxes alone were enough, were they not? Sigh. Evidently they were lacking in something. Now that Pookie is going to be officially homeschooling at the Pre-K level this autumn, I am revisiting this issue. He needs the schedule. That part was obvious. But, what was not so obvious was our daughter needing it. I just figured that the workboxes alone would make it easier. Remove contents from a workbox, complete that activity and put it into the “finished” bin. Sounds easy enough. Well, maybe that was so easy that it was working against us.
In the next school term, Little Miss will be doing more subjects than she had this term. A schedule will help greatly in keeping her more organized. She loves homeschooling, but hates missing out on play time or fun stuff. Put too many worksheets back to back in her workboxes and she get bored and frustrated. She loses her enthusiasm for learning. In Ms. Patrick’s book, she highly recommends having centers and other activities placed sporadically throughout the assignments each day. These give the child a chance to get up away from their desk at intervals & allow them to do hands-on activities that keep them motivated while learning. I have admittedly ignored that sage piece of advice. At first, we did a bit of it. Then we had my eldest daughter’s family move in for a time after a job loss. That disrupted our routine severely and the centers & interactive posters went to the wayside. Now, it is back down to Little Miss, Pookie, my husband and I at home. I am looking at the entire workbox system differently.
First thing to change is that the visual schedules are going to be used by both children. For Pookie, it will be essential for him to learn the structure of his day so that he knows what is expected. For Little Miss, it will help her to stay on task to get her work done more efficiently. Through use of the schedule, she can see at a glance what is left to be done. She will also be able to know what is ahead. If there is a particular activity that she is wanting to do, she will have to complete all the others ahead of it first. As we begin the new school term, this will become more important. The additional subjects, along with her Little Keepers program, will keep her busy. If she works her time properly, she will still have much free time to play or do activities that she wants.
One of the parts of homeschool that Little Miss loves the most is the lapbooks.. Today, she requested that we do more of them. I am going to be finding more lapbooks to accompany her lessons. If there is a topic that I cannot find a lapbook for, I will find one for one of her books. She loved the lapbooks for the Little House book series. There are many other children’s books that you can find lapbook materials for. Homeschool Share has many such lapbooks available for free on their website. You can often find free or inexpensive lapbooks available at Currclick. It is free to sign up for Currclick and the materials are all in a downloadable format such as pdf.
After talking with Little Miss, she is even more excited about the school days ahead. She has been doing so well already. Fine tuning the way we do our school days will only make the days go even better.
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