These are a few of my favorite things

Here are more images of our workboxes in action. This is Lil'Bit's third drawer of the day. She opened the box and found everything right there for her.


She worked the page. Yes, by golly, that sheet's laminated and yes I am a "professional" homeschooler! And thanks to Ruth Beechick I can now happily ignore that little red line under the word homeschooler. ;0) For more details scroll down to the Weekly Language Tip, here. This is a great newsletter if you don't already get it.


She cleaned up
She replaced the items (sometimes she'll even put them back where they came from instead of back in the drawer which makes Mommy really happy). Then she took the #3 tag off of the drawer and placed it on her "grid". One drawer down....


By the way, I love this wonderful stuff. I use it for lots of things. It is much better than the blue stuff in my opinion.
It comes off of the walls much better - not pulling the paint off - yet still holding well. Here it is holding up coins to represent the number date. That's some more of Marcy Cook's ideas. I use her Primary Today Is the Day for Numbers at this link. This book lists number facts for each day of the school year plus all the ways to show each date with United States coins (e.g., 5 is the number of Great Lakes for March 5th, 12 is the number of Reindeer for December 12th, etc..) Later in the month it seems like we simply use money more often to represent the number date. I don't always follow her list, if you can believe that. Sometimes I make up my own to fit our situation or use another item/representation that I think would be more meaningful to my girls. I can't tell you how much this visual has helped me, too. If I am writing a check I pretty much always know the date because of this little mnenomic device.


And one other thing I use Plasti-Tak for is to attach the The "Work With Mom" tag because that varies each day from drawer-to-drawer and it seems a little overkill to have 2 velcro buttons on EVERY drawer.


This is drawer #6 - some physical activity for the day.




And after 15 minutes of working on this she got it. She hasn't been able to do it until today (the first time in her workbox).

This is what she found in the next drawer. We love these little journals. This was one of the best birthday gifts we've ever received. I love those gifts that keep on giving. And the workbox system ensures that we regularly keep with it.

Finally - her last drawer - more Marcy Cook math Color it On the 30s chart slips. We love these!


Also, I couldn't live without a timer. We use them for practically everything. I even send them sometimes to play at the neighbor's house with this one around their neck. Anyway, I keep them all in one drawer so there's one always handy.


That's all for now. I always enjoy others' ideas so I just thought I'd share some of my favorite things today. Workboxes, plasti-tak, Marcy Cook, This Is Me Journals, and timers...good stuff.