Wednesday Learning Boxes

I thought I would give you all a little peek into our learning boxes. This is absolutely the best system for keeping us on track. I know this will be even nicer when the kids start doing things more independently. I can just load the boxes and they can flow through them until all of their work is done. For now, this keeps ME from getting off track. Especially since we break away for INP activities, etc. I only have work boxes for Rookie right now and honestly we don't have room for anyone else to have them. Hopefully when I start implementing them with Ace, we will have the room.

Here is the set up. My original plan was to use the smaller boxes for his school work and the larger boxes for "star boxes" or fun open ended activities. Alas, the larger boxes do not get filled right now. I don't have a lot of "toys" to put in them for variety, so I usually just let him choose something from the shelf.

The first box that we do is "red". This has our RRSP materials in it for the day. This day we are coloring our verse. We go over the verse and allow Rookie to color it however he wants. Then we use scissor skills to cut out our "E is for..." page. He works on tracing his E correctly and we go over whatever is in the box whether it is an idea, bible verse, song, etc. It is fun when they are songs and we get to sing them.

The next box is "orange". This has our Handwriting without Tears wooden pieces, CD,  and anything else we may need for handwriting specifics. The boys love the "tap tap tap" song. This is also where we learn how to build our letter and sing "Where do we start our letters? At the TOP!" This has been a huge help in learning how to form each letter and understanding that a letter has a top, middle and bottom.

The next two boxes are "green" and "blue". These boxes have our Letter of the Week activities. I separate it into two boxes so the amount is not overwhelming. This Wednesday, our green box had "color by numbers" and "size sorting". Our blue box had "tracing E", "Magnet Page" and "Graphing".

Sadly, our bottom two boxes, "purple" and "black" remain empty unless Ladybug puts random toys in them. In time I might find a fun use for them. Maybe putting his fine motor toy for that day in them for when he listens to mozart....that is actually a good idea! I'm glad I JUST thought of it! HA!

Finally, we place all of our finished projects and items on the top of the cart for me to put away later. This helps to know what we have done and leave what we didn't finish in the cart to take on tomorrow.