Homeschool Arts and Crafts, for Mama

I've been busy creating things for our homeschool, and these are the results.

Over on the Sonlight forums there has been a lengthy discussion of the Workbox System of assigning homeschool work. At first I was resistant to the idea, as it would take up a lot of space (all the more so considering I have 5 kids) until I saw this woman's adaptation to the system to fit in pockets in a single plastic bin. Well, I gathered items I already had on hand and made one up for my Kindergartner. I didn't have any cool pre-glued velcro dots on hand, so I just cut squares of the regular velcro I had and hot glued them on.

All the sample photos and descriptions I found of the Workbox System had 12 boxes, pockets, or envelopes per day per child. I made up 12 for my son, but only for future use. I only filled 8 pockets today and put the 4 away. I require that he complete the first 6, and the last 2 are fun or lighter activities that he can do if he wants. Today's pockets were:

1. The Family Time Bible story book and his Sunday School memory verse.
   
2. Handwriting Without Tears workbook (half a page).
3. A Sonlight Core P4/5 book, Things People Do. While I only put one book in a pocket it is the reminder that it is time to read a few books to him.
4. His sand letter cards (see below).
   
5. A Miquon Math Orange book page.
6. A Draw Write Now book and a couple sheets of drawing paper. He usually draws a single animal or something each day and doesn't do the writing.
7. (he didn't get to this today) Developing the Early Learner book 2 workbook. He calls this his "fun" workbook.
8. (he didn't do this either) Mighty Minds game.

Sunday I made sand letter cards for my Kindergartner as well, based on Heather's blog post about the cards she made. The biggest difference in my letter cards over Heather's is that instead of using red sand to make the starting point dot I used a dot of red paint. I had red paint on hand and it was much easier than doing the whole sand process twice. Anyway, I am now making the sand letter cards a daily part of his school, to make learning letter sounds a more multi-sensory process. He traces the letter while I say and he repeats the sounds, involving visual (seeing the letter), auditory (hearing me say the sound and then repeating it himself), and tactile (feeling the shape of the letter as he traces it with his finger).