Work Box System Tags

I'm continuing to work on our homeschool area in the new house.  Next year, Dragonfly will be starting kindergarten, so I'm going to try a work box system for her materials.  We already have a bunch of paper drawers from our old house, which I plan on using as work boxes.

The concept of a work box is part organization and park scheduling.  The parent fills the bins up every day with the materials the child needs to do that day.  One subject/activity goes in each bin, with the materials needed to complete the subject all contained in the drawer.  At school time, the child will start from the top and work her/his way down the row of bins.  When s/he has completed all the bins, s/he is done with school for the day.

The beauty of this schedule system is that the parent can organized the subjects for multiple students at the same time, staggering the subjects that require one-on-one attention.  I'm planning on putting Dragonfly's materials in a separate set of drawers and have the boys together.  Some of the subject we'll do at the same time (like read-aloud) and some will be unique to each skill set.  I'm sure I'll have a bit of tweaking to do once we start school next year, but the overall system should work pretty well for us.

I've made some work box tags that will fit on the plastic drawers.  I like to laminate them and tape them on with packaging tape.  The tags will peel off the tape with the laminate, which is helpful for using them year after year.  I will probably add something to the drawers (maybe a colored dot) that will help the kids to see which boxes are their own subjects.

To download the work box tags, click here.