Editable Workbox Planners are Up

I’ve finally gotten a bit of time to re-create the planners in an editable format.   They are Microsoft Publisher files and are very simple tables that will allow you to easily customize them to fit your needs.  (These planners are now letter-sized to better fit into files, crates, and binders.)

Look over there in the green “Clippings” box in the sidebar on the right.  The files are “WorkboxPlanner_Days1-5″ and “WorkboxPlanner_MonFri”.  Feel free to edit to your heart’s content.

I hope that these files help in a small way to plan a smoother, better, more peaceful year for you and your family.

Have a wonderfully blessed school year, everyone!

St. Matthew Karol

Sweet baby Matthew Karol has gone home to Holy God, having lived the fullness and richness of the Catholic life:  love, suffering and the Sacraments.

God bless Emily, John and their whole family for their powerful witness to love and life.

Eternal Rest grant unto Matthew, O Lord, and let the Perpetual Light shine upon him.  May he and the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Urgent Prayers for a Miracle

A dear friend, Emily, and her unborn baby, Matthew, need everything you got.  Please pray with us and pass it on.

A Workbox-inspired To Do List

Project Needs:

• Laminating film
• Paper to fit the film
• sticky notes

I love using blank laminated paper for all sorts of schooly things (handwriting practice, math problems, drawing, etc) with either a wet- or dry-erase pen, depending, so thought that this might be a possibility for my daily To Do list as well.  I bought some pretty scrapbook paper, trimmed it to fit the laminating film, then divided the paper into morning, noon and night.  Next I laminated the paper, put a removable sticky strip on the back and put it on the refrigerator.  I trimmed sticky notes to about 1″ inch square and wrote one task per sticky and put them on the appropriate part of the day.  As I do each task, I simply take that sticky off my list and throw it away, gone forever, leaving a blessed oasis of nothing in its place.
< e x h a l e >  It’s a wonderful thing.

Picture Thought: Happy.

Grape Snowman, edible media composition by William DeSmet.

All About Spelling: New Release & SALE!

All About Spelling has just released Level 5 and it’s 25% off until July 18th.  Double wonderful!

If you’re new to AAS, it’s a multi-sensory approach to spelling (sight, sound, touch) based on phonics.  It’s been a great help for our 7th grader to patch a few small potholes in the spelling road; for our 4th grader to go from a horrible speller to quite decent; and our preschooler has shot up to the moon with his spelling and reading, just by watching his brothers and playing with the magnet tiles on his own.  Not just for homeschoolers, AAS is an effective tool for classroom teachers and parents who want to help their students to achieve greater success as confident spellers.

I could write a book on why I love this curriculum, but I’ll spare us both.  ;^ )  It’s been a good one for us.

Blessings,

Jennifer

In Progress: A Younger Book of Days for Preschoolers!

I’ve been struggling to teach Pip (5 ½) the concept of days, weeks, months and years. The only idea I’ve had success with so far is the idea of “how many sleeps” it is until a particular day or event (“Nana will be here in ten more sleeps”).  He understands that very concretely, now it’s just translating and expanding that idea into the broader understanding of the passage of time.

I recently ordered The Catholic Woman’s Planner from Michele at Family-Centered Press (love her planner!); I also saw her Student Planner and ordered two for both Firstie and Middlin.  I hemmed and hawed about whether or not to order one for Pip and decided against it; he’s not there yet.

Thinking about that gave me some wonderful inspiration.  I’m in the planning phase of A Younger Book of Days,  a calendar book designed just for preschoolers, so stay tuned!

~ Blessings

New Lesson Plan File Uploaded

Instead of labeling days Monday through Friday, many prefer the labels of Day 1 through Day 5.  I did a little tweaking and the new pdf is in the green CLIPPINGS box on the right if you’d like to use it.  Look for “NumberDays” as the end of the file name.

Happy planning!

Lesson Plan Book for Workboxes

After much struggle brainstorming to figure out how to get a whole week’s worth of lesson plans onto a single page Workbox-style, I stumbled onto a format that is easy on the eyes and super simple to use.  Praise be to God for the inspiration!

This is a Legal-sized plan book, and although it’s a little bigger than I’m used to, I love the visual peace on the page.

Project Tools:

• PDF file to print
• Legal size printing paper
• Binding (either supplies or a service)
• Cover material (either construction paper (cut and assembled) or Legal size cover stock)

The PDF for the file is right there in the Box.net widget in the right side scroll bar; feel free to use it to your heart’s content and share it with your friends if you find it helpful.

This plan book is blessedly simple.  Here’s a look:

One week of Workboxing at your fingertips

I grouped the 12 boxes into three groups of four, which reflects how we break up our our school day; we’ll work through these from top left to bottom right, just like reading.  There is plenty of room for family duties and fun.  The Notes box is to record problems & tweaks to help for the next week.  I have a global plan for the year, but plan in five 9-week quarters (we’re year ’rounders).  You can click the images for a better look, just hit the back button to return to the post.

Cover (very, extremely homemade O: )

Blessings to you in your planning days!

- Jennifer

ps–apologies for the dark pictures; hard disk error and not all of my software’s been re-installed.  Soon, hopefully. : )

Workboxes Redux

I loveLoveLOVE the concept and practical use of Workboxes.  But I’m short on space and tried to innovate another solution.  It only took two days to learn that theory vs. practice crashed and burned, so I jumped ship and have been treading water ever since.

I know that there is something huge to Workboxes and that it will benefit the citizens of Boyville greatly, but couldn’t wrap my brain around how to make it work in a tight space.

We live in a very remote location and so when I had a chance to visit the closest Walmart, I jumped at the chance to browse and brainstorm.  Three hours and two very achy legs later, by George, I think I’ve got it!

Workboxes set-up for Kinder/1st Workboxes

What a blessing, a grace and a sigh of relief.  I love it–and it works.  Here’s how it came together:

1. The shelf from Walmart was $24.88 and I found it back by the hardware/home storage/shelving area.  It’s 30″ high x 23″ wide x 13″ deep.  I can’t find it on their site online, though.  Phooey.
2. The Sterilite boxes were $3 each (approx 4″ high x 6″ wide x 7″ deep.  They came with clear lids and squarish teal-colored handles (and those handles sure put up a great fight! ; ).
3. The hooks on the boxes are 3M Command strip hooks, about $3.25 for a pack of 6.  I didn’t use the sticking strips, but hot glued them instead to keep them as invisible as possible (see below).  Those babies aren’t going anywhere.
4. The number tags were made very simply from what I had on hand (foam sheets & glitter glue).  I used magnets on the back instead of using velcro dots (I cut two self-adhesive business card magnets to size and simply stuck them on the back of the tags) .  When Pip’s done with a box, he takes the number off the hook and moves it to his “All Done” magnet board (see below).  Easy peasy!

Hooks and number tags

"All Done" magnet/dry erase board

Now, this side of heaven, nothing is perfect; what are some problems that I see with this set up?

1. I’m pretty sure that the shelf is too small.  There was a longer, slightly deeper 4-shelf version right next to the 3-shelf version I got.  I think for Middlin (rising 5th grader), I’ll get the bigger 4-shelf version and just not put the last shelf on (very possible with the adustable assembly method).
2. Cost.  This sweet set-up cost $25 for the shelf, $18 for the boxes and $3 for the hooks (I had everything else at home), so it was $46+ when all was said and done.  That’s almost twice the cost of some set-ups, but only a fraction of my heart’s desire, Ikea’s Trofast system.  I think it’s a great compromise.

I am so very excited to move through the rest of our light summer schooling schedule to see if I need to make any tweaks along the way before we hit the new school year on August 15th.

If you’re blogging your own Workboxes set-up, please feel free to leave a link in the Comments section.

Blessings to you!