Workboxes

This is such an experiment!!! I am learning so much about both my daughter and myself through this experience.

As I mentioned before, we are now doing our own thing, and we are loving it. (Side note: Unfortunately, upon scanning the Calvert Pre-K materials, I don't see a ton of stuff that we can use. A lesson to all of you out there -- do not write on your curriculum or start cutting things out until you look through everything to make sure if you want it!!!) I am trying out the idea of workboxes. I like the flexibility and the way it can be tailored to each child. It can be set up in such a way that Bug could independently go over, select something, and do some work on her own. In an organized fashion! (Which you all know I *love*.) If you are interested, Google workboxes - you will get a ton of hits and lots of fun pictures to peruse. I love to see how everyone else organizes their home/learning area, so I could spend hours just looking at that stuff. :)

Instead of rushing out and buying shelves and boxes and setting it up (of course, that's what I'm *dying* to do!! an organizational project yaay!), I am trying it out for a couple weeks to see if it suits us. Here is what I have done so far - a box for each day with that day's activities inside:



As an example -- here is what I have inside Thursday's box:


Hopefully, this weekend I will get the entire week pulled together ahead of time, and I will post pictures and information about what I am planning for each day. The boxes for this week don't include everything I want to do each day. I need to add in Handwriting Without Tears and more activity sheets ahead of time. This week, I have been copying/printing the worksheets as we go.

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Other than playing around with the structure, everything has been going very well. We are in week 4, and while it has been a little overwhelming to juggle everything at times (housework, my job, Children's ministries at church, and the schooling -- and oh yeah a baby!!), I still feel that this is worthwhile and rewarding. I sat down and went through everything, to see where I could create more hours in the day, and we have decided to have a cleaning lady come every other week.

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In the "researching schools" area: I have been looking into BASIS school -- it starts at 5th grade, it's a charter school (FREE!), and it's highly ranked by Newsweek in a national ranking of high schools. I called them this week to see how they feel about homeschooled kids, and they said they actually get a lot of kids who have been schooled at home. That was excellent news to me. We are also going to visit a charter Montessori school and a private Episcopal school (pricey!) sometime in the next month.

I want to see what else is out there, so we can make the most informed decision next spring when we sit down and discuss what we want to do for Kindergarten.