Filling the workboxes with educational fun!

We are lucky to be part of a homeschool Charter School here in California, Connecting Waters Charter School, where we are given an allowance for curriculum and educational supplies. I realized that it was getting close to the end of the school year and we still had a lot of money in our account. I decided that one thing I wanted to spend money on was more hands on educational activities and games. We use the Workboxes system and I like to have fun things for the kids to put into the boxes. I shared some of the things I was doing a couple of years ago in my post (F)unschooling: Boxing up some learning fun! It mixes things up a bit when there are a variety of activities presented. I also believe that there is a lot of learning that happens when playing games. I know that I learned a lot of world geography as a kid by the hours spend playing Risk with my brother and sisters.

A lot of the activities I put in the boxes are pretty simple and inexpensive. When I saw this craft kit on clearance I knew it was the perfect thing to put into one of Scootch's boxes:

Now I had the chance to not worry so much about prices, I could shop on the school's dime. Here are some of the things I ordered:

Equate: The Equation Thinking Game

Scrabble with math! I think I will love it and my husband will hate it. Hopefully the kids and I will have fun playing it.

ShapeOmetry

This solitaire game is a lot harder than it looks! A fun combination of geometry, spacial awareness and logic.

Professor Noggin's History and Geography Card Games

These are card games but the can also be used alone like flash cards and self quizzes.

Professor Noggin's Science Card Games

Roll 'N Multiply Game

It is very common for a child with a high IQ to have a hard time memorizing basic facts, like multiplication facts. My little guy who is a wiz at algebra, way before his years, still needs practice with his multiplication facts. He took one look at this game and told me it looked stupid. He then proceeded to open the box, and play a game against himself, completely engrossed and got annoyed when anyone would interrupt him.

PathWords

This looked like a fun game to put into a workbox. It is all in a very neat little hard case, making it easy to store, put in a workbox, or take on a trip. These kind of solitaire games are perfect for workboxes!

10-Minute Bananagrams!

We have a set of Banangrams, but I start to run out of ideas of things to do with that little set of letter tiles. We have gone through most of Banangrams for Kids!, and this book will give me some new challenges for me to give the kids in their workboxes.

10 Days in Europe

We already have 10 Days in the USA, so now we are going to try 10 Days in Europe. You have to travel from one place to another on a map, and you really learn the locations of all of the states or countries.

The kids are having lots of fun with the gyroscopes we got!

My younger son just started playing guitar with his dad so I got him a guitar along with an instructional book and DVD.

 We love the modeling beeswax but it is a bit pricey. This was the perfect chance to stock up on some.

 I'm not sure what I'm going to use the Wikki Stix for, but I'm sure I'll come up with something!

Some magnetic tangrams to round things out.

I'm already starting to plan for things I will buy in Fall 2014 when my little one starts Kindergarten. I'm definitely going to be ordering some of the things listed here.

Our first boxes arrived to day so I'm going to have lots of fun filling workboxes tonight!

Update

Here are some of the fun things we have used our funding for this year:

A new microscope kit

A digital microscope

Tangoes Jr

Hot Peppers Garden

Some essentials, we always need "refills"

Composition books

Sidewalk Chalk

Liquid watercolors

Popcicle sticks and other wooden pieces so we can keep building things like this cool bridge:

Dry erase markers

More pattern blocks were requested

Amazing Bridges architecture kit

A History of US book set

For my little zoologist:

A Frog Hatching Kit

Bullfrog tadpoles (with plenty of food and extra aquariums)

Incubator with Quail Eggs

Butterfly Kit

Thinking Putty

Squishy Human Body Model

The Twist Whiz

Laser Maze game

Some Cobblestone magazine subscriptions are always a must.

We've also ordered lots and lots of books! Some of the series the boys like (and some of what we ordered)

Fablehaven

The Shadow Children, by Haddix

Big Nate

Secret Series

Brotherband Chronicles

Rangers Apprentice

What educational supplies would you buy if you had funding?

Workboxes and Power Struggles

I've blogged in the past about how workboxes work for us, and have several posts about workboxes. I have found yet another way to use them. One of my favorite things about workboxes is how using them significantly decreases power struggles. The, "I don't want to do it" is all but gone.

Scootch has Aspergers/ADHD. He is so smart, and learns so quickly, but some things are really hard for him. Writing is at the top of the "hard" list. Right around the time we started homeschooling he was struggling with anxiety. He easily became frustrated to the point of a complete melt down. He'd rather cut off his right arm than do a worksheet. As a result, I really backed off on forcing him to do work that involved putting pencil to paper. That was fine for a few years. Now he is almost 11 and in the 6th grade. He has also made huge progress in regulating his emotions and behavior. I decided it was time to give him a bit of a push. I was starting to feel like some of the accommodations we had put in place to help were starting to enable and actually hold him back. I knew I was signing myself up for a power struggle with the veritable gold medal winner of power struggles. I realized  it would be faced with resistance and intense reactions, but I was ready.

I got the intense reactions alright! There were times when he would throw a fit over writing down a math problem (he would beg me to write it for him-let the power struggle begin). I usually work hard to avoid power struggles in the first place and now I had set things up so that it would happen. I told him that the fit was unacceptable, but he needed more inspiration than a few words from me to stop, and I knew he had it in him to stop. That is when a parent goes for the holy grail: What is important to him? What does he want?

There is one thing he wants: free computer time. We already had a system in place where the kids need to finish their school work (workboxes) and their chores (clean up room etc.) before they can have free computer time. This system takes away a lot of stress and nagging on my part. No power struggles. I don't need to tell them to clean their room, I hear one call to the other, "Let's go clean our room!". With workboxes they can take as long as they like to finish their school work. They can choose to peck away at it bit by bit, and take all day, or they can sit down and finish it all before lunch. No power struggles of me telling them to do an assignment, they get to choose when they do it. They just can't go on the computer until it is finished.

However, now we were dealing with those fits. How could I re-order the system to prevent the power struggles? At first I changed it to "finish school nicely" to get the computer time, but that was a bit vague. We needed to break it down into smaller chunks. What if he did great on all workboxes but one? That is when I decided to put a time token on each workbox. Instead of earning a flat 2 hours of computer time when work was finished, now he earned time for each workbox completed "nicely".

I don't always give the kids the same number of workboxes. They may get as few as 4 or as many as 8 on a given day. I made up a bunch of tokens (laminated them and put velcro dots on the back) with a variety of times on them, 15, 20, 30 minutes. I put them on the workboxes so that they total 2 hours each day. If he finishes the workbox with a good attitude, then he get the token. If he is not working appropriately, then I can take the token.

We spent a lot of time talking about appropriate and inappropriate behavior. A good attitude can include saying that you don't like something, or don't want to do it. I'm even willing to negotiate and will sometimes change an assignment if it is discussed in a calm manner. It is inappropriate, however, to throw the chair over, or crumple up the paper, or scream.

A sample of workboxes with time tokens

We also reviewed ways that he can calm himself down. He has a variety of things that he knows he can do when he is starting to feel stressed, and he knows he has permission to do those things whenever he needs to.

Holding his snake is very calming. We often do lessons with help from the snake.

I really hate using a token economy, it is not the style of parenting I would choose. I must say though that it is working beautifully. It was over a week before he lost a token. He was so upset by it that he has been working really hard to stay calm, and do what he needs to do.

I am now having fun watching him learn and grow! A month ago we could not get through a math lesson without multiple break downs. Now, he does his math, writes out all of his problems like it is no big deal. Success!

Another article: Why workboxes can work for your autistic homeschooler

Different Ways to use Workboxes

When we started using Workboxes I began by setting them up like I had seen on different websites and blogs. Each child had his own set of workboxes on his part of the shelves. I posted last fall How Workboxes Work in Our House.

My first big innovation was to create "sister" boxes. This is where the older kids have a workbox that has a "sister" tag on it (kind of like a "mom" tag that means take this box and work with mom, only it is take this box and work with your little sister).


I have two boys ages 9 & 10. There are a lot of things for school that I like to to together: Read aloud, Social Studies, Science, a board game, to name a few. I found that if I didn't put something into a workbox, it often didn't get done! I'd tell myself "When they finish their other work we will play a game of Scrabble." When the time came around and they had finished all of their other boxes I'd tell myself, never mind, I'm too tired. Also, when it is in a box the kids seem to go along with it without complaint for some reason. When I have a book I want to read to both of them, whose box do I put it into?

Most of the workboxes have two velcro dots on them, room for two tags . I was very proud of myself to decide to put 3 velcro dots on a few of the boxes. This gives me a place to put a number tag for each boy, plus a "mom" tag. It would be easy to add a couple more dots (though you will start to run out of room!) for more kids. This is a box for the three of us to do together.:


Now the boys have some shelves with their individual workboxes:


On a separate shelf we have a few "group" workboxes. With their toddler sister running around, what usually works for us is to do these boxes when little sister takes her nap. Meanwhile, the boys can work on their individual boxes.

I use these tags (and created a sister tag to match):


Download your copy at http://www.spelloutloud.com/2009/08/cassies-workbox-graphics.html