Recently we reviewed a fantastic product called "Sue Patrick's Workbox System" for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC. You can find it at her website, www.workboxsystem.com. This is an awesome product that helps you organize your school day while placing more responsibility on your children to complete their assignments and activities. Please go to the site and check it out, buy the book, and consider using this, it is really awesome!! Since I am actually writing this blog about changes we made to the idea, you need to have a good rundown of the system as it is designed to better understand the changes we made, so please check out her site FIRST.

Part of the concept is about having boxes for the various assignments on a shoe rack, each filled with a particular activity. All activities are "listed" on a handy little strip with velcro to hold handy little numbers to direct your child to the numbered boxes and complete their assignments. This motivates children beautifully because of their desire to clean up the shelf, it is highly rewarding to watch the boxes be cleared out, and the more full boxes be set aside as completed when containing larger items.

The problem we ran into is that one of the things that bothers my son, who functions on the autism spectrum, is disorganization or any mess in his workspace. So we had to make some creative adjustments to the system in order to make it work for him. Add to that, the system uses numbered cards to mark the various boxes for work, along with a strip to place corresponding cards on to guide the student through their day. This is reminiscient of PECS (picture exchange communication system) for us and so we decided to run with that idea because it works very well for our son. SOO, rather than shoe boxes, we converted to a plastic seven drawer system from Walmart for $20. We chose the one with the four small drawers and three larger ones so that we could fit more games and things in the bottom ones and workbooks, reading books, etc. in the top ones. I still use the system base idea, having ALL of the items necessary for each assignment in each drawer, which at times means having pencils in every drawer, scissors or glue in several, etc.

Because we already had PECS for many games and things, we have placed a Picture of a particular game on the strip as an assignment, numbers are used for the drawers, and since the instruction strip provides up to sixteen assignments/activities for a day, we can still be completing that many activities while only using the neat seven drawers for some of them. And some things on the strip may be "lunch" or play in the yard, etc. His assignment strip includes game pictures (he knows to find them at the kitchen table where we complete activity center work), pictures of various work locations for our homeschool (I took pics or pulled them off of Google images of our write on wipe off board, pocket chart, computer programs, even the wii fit jogging program to fulfill Sue Patrick's running on days when the weather is bad.). These pictures are what we place on his instruction strip and he knows where to go, along with the numbered strips for a particular drawer in his stand. This kept things neat, gave me space to place bulkier items because most things do fit into the larger drawers when necessary, allowed us plenty of activities to still list on his assignment strip, and has fulfilled his need for neatness in the process. It also gave me the ability to roll his cart out of the way when not in use, even to another room when we have company, which is awesome!

And his responsibility level? Wow, it has improved greatly!!! I wholeheartedly recommend this book and the system. And I would definitely purchase the support materials because it will make your job so much easier when you first get started. We mounted the matching velcro to the drawers for both the numbers and the "Work with Mom" PECS and have also expanded our PECS offering to everything I could possibly categorize in our home school. I actually found a pocket chart for 100s made up of 100 two inch squares that hold the PECS perfectly and is awesome for me when planning because I just look over the items we have for school and pick what he needs to work on, then I record it on Sue Patrick's scheduling sheets to track what we have been doing. Awesome system!! Seriously. And you don't have to do what we did and make a bunch of PECS for all of your items for school, but we had many PECS already and they just slid right into this system beautifully. And of course, he loves the little pictures of his many activities!

I will try to get pictures on here soon of exactly what we had done. But I encourage you to try this product, if the boxes hold you back, give it some thought. This is the best thing we have ever done for our home school and for the independence of our children to handle their own work load. And I haven't even touched on the tremendous help it provided for me as I schedule our days. I use Sue Patrick's Workbox System right along with my high school daughter's schedule to make sure that my one on one time is scheduled perfectly for each child. This system allows me to easily see when my son will need me and when to schedule independent work for him while I work with my older daughter. If you put your mind to it and really read her book and understand the concept, try it as suggested for a while, and then adjust it to work best for your family. We have found a very happy medium with this and thank Sue Patrick for a tremendous product for homeschoolers. She took many ideas and trial and error and rolled it into a truly usable and helpful way to organize our days successfully!!

Pictures to follow below, check it all out!

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

As you can see, we place the numbers for each drawer down the left side, I placed velcro in the center of the drawer for the "Work with Mom" card when necessary, and just for clarification the right side has a PEC of the activity or work inside. Drawer number one contains our Awana workbook, pencils, and scripture memory. Drawer number three is hard to see, but it has his handwriting work for cursive inside of it, along with sharpened pencils and paper. And drawer number six, actually has supplies for lapbooking. I know it is hard to see, but I used a picture of kids holding a completed lapbook in demonstration for the PEC.

Here is an example of a few assignments for the day on the velcro strip you can purchase through www.workboxsystem.com. It is awesome! First is a reading assignment, set up on the couch and he would know this. Second is computer work with a program on disk, third is drawer #2 in 'our system' of drawers, and fourth is a Write on/Wipe Off activity that I have set up for him and he knows where to go for that. The second strip continues his work with a game of chess using an educational chess curriculum, drawer #3 in 'our system', running time on the Wii fit (and yes that is a screen shot from Google Images) and last is drawer #6 of 'our system' with a lapbooking project.

As you can see, below is a 100s chart we utilize for storage of our PECS. It is actually placed on our upright freezer using heavy duty magnets, you can see the little circle magnets in some of the pockets.

As he  completes his assignments, we splurged and purchased a multi level business card holder that he places his PECS in for everything he has completed. Notice, on the front of this holder I placed velcro to hold his "I need help" cards. If he needs extra help he has to give one of these to me, which he hates to do. As the program explains, this helps the student become more responsible. The first day he still had all four of his helps left he was so excited!!! He had completed all assignments without extra help. This does not mean I do not help him or teach throughout the day. Some activities come with "work with mom" for the assignment and we go through all of the assignments at the start of the day, because he needs that anyway. But he has stayed on track and worked beautifully using this system.

As you can see, if you read up on Sue Patrick's Workbox System, she tells you that you can adjust it as necessary AFTER YOU TRY IT AS PRESCRIBED!! I think most children will work very well as the system is designed, we simply had a personal issue over the design and had to adjust it accordingly. This was our adjustment and it has worked well for our family. Your family may come up with another way that will work perfectly for your family.

CHECK IT ALL OUT at www.workboxsystem.com for Sue Patrick's Workbox System and all support materials. I strongly encourage you to purchase the additional physical support materials as they will make set up so much quicker and easier!!

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

I can hardly believe I have allowed an entire month to pass without blogging! But here I am, knee deep in the new school work for the year and staying incredibly busy, as I know many of my blogging buddies are as well. 2G16 is almost seventeen and we have switched gears this year by focusing primarily on one book or subject area per day, this seems to be working beautifully so far. Of course, we work the other areas daily, with her various accompanying assignments, and the fact that every subject involves every other subject anyway keeps us well rounded. We set aside two to three hours to really delve into an area deeply for each day. As a junior in high school now, we really need this time to deal with culturally relevant issues while keeping her focused on a biblical worldview. We both are enjoying it and it is going quite well. It has made planning for homework assignments so much easier for both of us.

Our family time is spent together with science, reading through various science topics and completing different lab activities. Many of the materials from Answers In Genesis are so awesome for homeschooling, and I highly recommend Demolishing Strongholds as a bible study for any family ready to challenge the ideas of evolution head on. We worked through it with a small group from 2G16's youth group, many fell away with busy schedules and such, but it is an excellent study. Studying American government this year with the 5,000 Year Leap book and curriculum is going well, the book is a bit difficult for 2G16, but she needed a challenge in this area. For those who have not checked out ALEKS yet through one of their one month trials with TOS or independently, we are loving it! It is an excellent internet based math program that has been welcomed by 2G16, and she's a tough one to sell on math. One of my reviews this last year was for Implications of American Literature, completing that along with the American Government study is ideal. My daughter was thrilled at the thought of a real textbook, with a nice and crisp, clean name plate at the front. She was public schooled through 6th grade, it's been a while since she has handled one of those heavy textbooks we remember from growing up in schools, with ten other names sprawled across the inside, we SO appreciate our own books!! We've stretched Mystery of History Volume two into this year from last, because we took time to study the United Kingdom and Missionaries before her mission trip this summer. This is allowing us to take more time with the various extension activities offered in MOH and combine them with the missionary geography information included in the Rooted & Grounded books. I still need to get a great wall world map to mount in the hallway, I want to mark all of the areas we read about throughout the year. Balancing the Sword is holding true as well, and we are choosing various books of the Bible to work through, currently 1st Corinthians.

As for my 3B9? The autistic tendencies and his learning delays have continued to challenge us. He is at the age now of understanding a bit more about why he has delays, and we are stressing God's wonderful creation of him. I have no idea why God chose to design him the way He did, but we trust that He has a plan for his life, and he seems to be accepting that all of us are different in different ways. We have resorted to various studies in reading, bombardment at this point is all I can say to explain this decision. Or perhaps, obsession, would be a better word. For those working with autistics, you know they often obsess about things, our latest obsession in this house has been Webkinz. We have him earning any time on Webkinz by completing other school work, which works for him. He actually bounces between a program called My Reading Coach, various computer phonics and reading games, Starfall, Go Phonics games, and the Scaredy Cat Reading system. Each has offered a bit of success for him, but having him move from activity to activity and program to program, he has been much more apt to discuss what he is learning, ask questions, and take some initiative and responsiblity for his gaining of knowledge and understanding. Daily he is coming to me with additional words, spelling things independently, and is fascinated with math in the real world. It warms my heart when he is in the middle of a store and shares with me some pricing information and totals for items or something, and then spouts out: "I just did Math, didn't I, Mom?" Things continue to come together for him! Every day is a struggle, and there are days where it seems he knows nothing at all and struggles to recall much of anything. Other days, learning comes easily and his recollection is quite strong and organized. He always has a grand memory ability and is still memorizing whole books with ease, but it is incredibly interesting to teach a child who can "read" an entire book by memory after hearing it twice, yet be unable to read phonetically more than a handfull of words from the same book. He is finding his way, though, a little more every day.

My littles, 4B3 and 5B16M, are learning by leaps and bounds. 4B3 still struggles with his speech, but he is definitely talking more often. We are using So smart! DVDs designed for infants and toddlers with everyone, watching together and dramatically emphasizing the changes made during the program as different preschool concepts are presented. These things are awesome if you don't mind getting a little creative, we've made pictures with boats and pigs and the different things the program puts together to emphasize shapes, by cutting apart the various shapes before hand and having 4B3 and 3B9 put them together. It's adorable, and makes for some great family time. And they love showing off their pictures as they watch the show with Daddy, demonstrating how they were able to match the things on the show. For more fun, we are making the faces that are shown on the program, complete with moving eyelids, just like the program! I haven't minded a bit the time taken in the evening to think a bit and cut out the necessary items to be put together whenever we watch the show again. I have hopes to just set up a bunch of different activities into various baggies, so that I can just leave it all alone and when the boys request to watch that DVD I can miraculously whip out another activity to put together when done. It's amazing how much more conversing can get done during a program with no talking, the calming classical music allowed us to talk up a storm on our own, which 4B3 did! Puzzles are going over quite well for both little boys, as are Wedgits--I am so glad I bought those Wee Wedgits for 5B16M a while back! All the usual preschool stuff is much more available with the redesign of their bedroom, oh yeah, I really need to put on pictures of their room!! I'll try to remember to get that done soon.

And of course, 1G21 is off to college again, she hit the college newspaper this week, that was pretty cool. The story of her writing a book made the front page as a mini feature, then took the full second page for the actual story! Book sales are going along well enough, we really need to finish our activities to be put on the website so that homeschoolers can use her book with a few educational activities tied in. She is fairly far along with Book Two, the editing and proofreading process will continue for the coming months, and we have fans anxiously awaiting the publishing of it, so we are busy working as fast as we can. Actually, SHE is busy working, along with school, of course. We miss her terribly now that she has moved back to campus, but we enjoy her breaks, like this long weekend when she will be home. We appreciate prayers for her safety and circle of influence, that God would use her in positive ways in the lives of others as she ventures more and more out into the world.

For me, reviews are continuing to be incredibly enjoyable, and they keep me busy and moving forward as deadlines continue to cycle on regardless of schedules and appointments. The house continues to get more organized as I tackle little projects when I can. And I am learning daily to enjoy my family, to see past the occasional messes in this house, and take time to focus on these beautiful little people God has placed in my world for a time...I am so very blessed. I would appreciate prayers as I am considering committing to working in the preschool department at our church for Sunday School. God has bestowed a great deal of experience and education through our many years of child care and my CDA (child development associate credential), although I have now let it lapse. The education remains, and the idea of helping more of our little ones understand their heavenly Father as I serve Him, is appealing, although daunting, as the idea of another commitment has me wavering over this decision. As this decision will need to be made soon, I really do appreciate your prayers.

I hope school is well on it's way in your home, as 2009 is quickly approaching. Have you found a favorite curriculum you are using this year? I'd love to hear about it. Hugs!!

Homeschooling sure does give new meaning to the words "Summer School" doesn't it? At our house, as the local public schools are winding down, we are gearing up again! What fun we are having. Right now, we just received the first copies of the book my oldest, 1G20, has been writing over the last four years. It has been a long and studious ride. This while she was graduating from high school and began her University education as an Aerospace Engineer, I suppose it makes sense that it was spread over four years. Anyway, the book is done, you can find her in my Friends List under JessicaLynnCampos. The book is already being sold on Amazon.com, the title is "The Risen, the Chosen, and the Dark, Book One: The Dawn of It All" and we are thrilled with all of the excitement.

With that excitement we are busy setting up a website for her, she will be selling autographed copies through it, just as soon as we can get it up and running. For 2G16, website design and maintenance has become quite a large part of her education these days. And the entire family is learning quite a bit about Publicity, as we are writing Press Releases and preparing for newspaper articles about the release of the book. I love homeschooling!! The education goes so far beyond any classroom setting. If our kids were in a school building they would never be able to be such a huge part of all of this, what a fantastic opportunity for all of us!! The learning around this house right now is absolutely INSANE, every day every single one of us is learning something about business, marketing, publicity, community connections, newspaper business, the list just goes on and on!

In our actual "school" schedule we will work on the same stuff all summer. We are letting up on Math a bit for 2G16 and plan to use ALEKS for a six month stretch next school year. For now, she is preparing for her Mission trip next month, heading out to Wales in the United Kingdom. Amazing! So we are spending more time in Bible study, at her request, and continuing with our more Bible emphasized subject areas like History, Language Arts, Geography, building our Timeline, and working very hard at basic life skills with 3B9. Science is still our least favorite in general, so we do what we must and not much more. We enjoy lots of books and dvds from Answers in Genesis and animal research and such, studying God's Creation is so much fun. I work better if I don't think about it as science, and instead focus on God's Hand. I hope to find a good telescope and do some star gazing this summer, I'm wondering whether we would be able to from indoors in our sunroom, that would be cool.

I must close for now, far too much to do. I hope to keep up a little better on writing, but I always say that. I pray your family is enjoying a wonderful SUMMER SCHOOL. (And Terra, if you are reading this, I've emailed you repeatedly, and can get your emails, but for some reason I guess you are not getting mine. I don't know what to do to fix that problem. I sure miss catching up with you, but you are in my prayers.) For everyone else, do me a favor, check out my daughter's book, we can use all the help we can get to spread the word. Have a great week!!

Here is 2G16 holding our newest family member, we finally have a puppy again!! We haven't owned a dog since we moved seven years ago, so this is a long time coming. So far, she is doing quite well. The kids have named her "Snoopy" and she is already getting plenty of attention. Her care will offer a whole new subject area for homeschooling and LIFE! As if we didn't have enough to do already, we thought we might as well make ourselves a little MORE busy. Why not?

So what is keeping your family busy these days??

Our little guy, 4B2, will be turning three in April. ALL the boys have their birthdays in April, which is kind of cool, a little bit difficult, but always FUN!! I have no idea why God worked it out this way, but we do have a lot of fun with it. This year I'm leaning toward a single party, a "Boys Birthday Bash" of sorts. I really need to lose weight, so having four birthdays in one month with cake could be a very bad thing, but ONE? Now that could work.

I thought I'd share a bit about my little guy's interest in learning, perhaps offer some ideas about what we do in case anyone is interested. He is a learner, no doubt about it! He is so interested in seeing what his big brother and big sister are doing, it's adorable. He keeps us on our toes by staying involved and makes the days so much more fun. Since my children are so spread out age-wise, I tend to juggle between the two currently in our S.T.A.R. Academy. (For new readers, that is what we named our school--Shooting The Arrows Righteously Academy) Our daughter, 2G16, is in the 10th grade, but she and I enjoy so much reading together and our times in discussion, I find that the majority of her schooling is directly with me. We alternate working together and working her Geometry course (which is DVD tutor based) and we are checking out ALEKS right now for one month with our free trial from ordering TOS again. She is also using Rosetta Stone French which is computer based. We've been blessed with a journal writer in 2G16, so she also spends time writing between our coursework sessions. Together we work on Mystery of History, our timeline, Balancing the Sword as our Bible study, and at least one read aloud at any given time.

When not working with her I am working with 3B8, and when I am working with her he is often at the table with us working on written assignments or mathwork that I can flip through easily. He is working at a second grade level generally, although we have continued to promote him at church and when asked he is a third grader currently. When she is working at the computer or with her Math assignments, he and I are working with reading, penmanship, math, lapbooking various subject matter, and right now we are working our way through nursery rhymes. Autistic spectrum kids often have a difficult time grasping what I consider vague concepts and idioms. In a round about way, nursery rhymes have fallen into that classification with him, he doesn't "get it" if that makes sense. So in an effort to understand them more fully, work on our rhyming, increase reading, color pictures for each, and all sorts of other skills that fall into making a book together, we are making a Rhyme book. The simple cutting and pasting of the pictures into the book and such also fulfills a need for fine motor skills which have been a continual problem for him.

With all of that said, like many of you, my 4B2 is running here and there and wondering what we are up to and how he can be involved on any given day. Due to my hubby's schedule, my 2G16 and I actually do a lot of our work late at night after 4B2 is in bed, which also allows me time to work directly with him in activities. So here are some of the things we've done this week: play doh!! No big surprise there! If you've forgotten about it, get some/make some/dig it out of your cabinets, but play with some. This is one of those activities that 3B8 is so great to keep involved in. While my little guy is content to squeeze, rip it apart, and pile it back together into little "mountains" of things, 3B8 tends to pick up whatever idea I throw out there by simply watching whatever I do. It's amazing the things they will pick up without having to say a word. I've worked attachment techniques that transfer over to clay work later, rolled many worms to turn into letters, utilized every possible household instrument to poke/mark/squish new designs, and he will always quietly watch and then pick up whatever skill he desires to try out new things. We played Color Clown Bingo so that 4B2 could work a little more on turn taking, and in everything we are working on his speech, which is lagging. We drew on black construction paper with very fascinating white crayons!!! For little guys, this is like magic and his face was priceless. We pulled out puzzles and once he had any four mastered fairly well, we dump them all together so that he works a bit more on dividing the pieces correctly. We sorted shapes on our velcro wall and categorized by size and color. And yes, we even took a few moments to sit down together on Webkinz and check on 3B8's virtual vegetable garden!! That program even has cute little coolers to place around the garden and store the freshly picked items in!

We also worked on ball skills, which is more play than work for 4B2 as he has always been naturally skilled in this area. My little 3B8 was not so lucky and catching is still a skill he continues to improve on, which is the other reason why we "played" this with brother. Then they built a few things with krinkles for a while as Mom set up another game at the table. We had 4B2 try a flash card activity we used with 3B8 as one of his first Floortime activities in therapy. (3B8s special needs included years of floortime/ABA type therapy at home when he could not transfer information or grasp the concept of 2D images representing real life objects) I am pleased to say that 4B2 is able to pick out pictures of shoes that are different from his own, recognized darkness in a nighttime picture, and proceeded to buzz when pointing out the bumble bee!! For many people these are unnoted milestones, but for 3B8 these were next to impossible and took many nights as a family seated in a circle on the floor with cards all around us for him to learn such items. (And many tears for mom, just for the fact that it was so difficult for him) So these days? We don't take such skills for granted in anyone! Praise God they are all learning successfully today. We have come a long way.

Don't underestimate the learning value of your olders teaching your littles. 4B2 and 5B11months have been A TREMENDOUS blessing to 3B8 in our home. God truly has known what He was doing with our family when He blessed us with these two more boys. They have placed 3B8 into the position of BIG brother, he knows more than them, he has something to offer them--his skills, his protection as big brother, and his love. It blesses my heart to see him popping up from behind the couch in an effort to make 5B11M burst out laughing!!! And although the noise can drive me crazy, it is such a blessing to watch 3B8(even as big as he is) and 4B2 rolling around the house on those little tikes 18 wheelers chasing each other! (And no, I'm sure they weren't quite meant to be ride-on toys, but oh well) And some day my littles will understand what a huge blessing they have in their "big" brother not being so proper and mature. He will play ANYTHING with them, and the opinion of those around him will never phase what he is doing. This can cause difficulty for him and is one thing that makes working in a group of children his age a challenge, but we accept him for who God has made him to be. He will still crawl around the house on all fours with brother leading him around with a set of headphones on and 4B2 holding the plug in end, this is their form of doggie pretending! It is a creative leash in any event, and it works for them. He still embarrasses his older sisters if he "flutters" his hands when we take walks and he wants to pretend to be a butterfly, but he does enjoy life. And oh the happiness my 3B8 has in looking forward to his little brother singing in the choir, "when the noise won't bother his ears like it did for me", he is still so sweet. Learning is still life in our home...and we are living and loving every minute of it.

I pray God is moving in your household this spring, and that you are loving every minute of it. What activities do you teach with your children together? Everything? Only certain subjects? Please share!

I hope you can see this alright on here, we used those little velcro dots and placed the hard ones on the back, soft ones on the front. This way if you are working on the timeline you don't hit a rough velcro dot while writing or whatever. I'm placing all of these entries in backward order really, sorry about that, I forgot I'm thinking in one direction and posting blog entries in the other. :-P  It's almost midnight, what can I say? Anyway, these are our timeline folders for Mystery of History. This particular one is blank because we haven't reached that point in history yet. It is also for decades, so it only shows ten years spread across the one file folder. This will allow us to place all of our family members into our history, right alongside major history makers! A really great idea considering obviously, our family are very important history makers for our little family. I hope this gives you some idea what your family might like to do, or avoid if you don't like it. We love it. And I can lay out a group of folders and have them all connected, even hang them on the wall connected if we'd like, if we are studying a specific time frame.

So now I have finally shared our timeline dealie. If I'm not making sense, feel free to ask. This really was our first attempt at any real use of file folders of any form within our homeschool. I figure it wasn't a bad start. Share if you want, we love hearing all about what everyone else is doing.

So what is one favorite thing you have come up with to creatively teach in your homeschool???

I could only picture them half of a side at a time, I hope you can get the idea from this. And don't laugh at my artwork, I'm no artist. It is hard to see, but anyone in the bloodline of Christ, like Rahab, has a golden cross on their chest, which I really thought was pretty cool. It makes it very easy to be reminded about that. There are times when we don't get very creative because we just have too much going on, other times we've sat drawing ideas before ever working on the timeline. I must admit I wish we had spent more significant time and planning on the timeline itself, because it is such a visual reminder of historical happenings, but this works well enough. For those of you not using Mystery of History, we also complete an ongoing 3x5 card notebook with information on every entry on the timeline. These two things working together really do allow for an informative and tangible way for kids to lock into the information in history. I have learned so much that either was never taught to me, or I missed!!

A long time ago I promised to put on some pictures of our timeline we decided to use with our Mystery of History assignments. The course offers a cool design for one, but we decided instead to use manila folders. I like the folders because we can file them later and place papers/notes/articles or whatever inside a folder for a particular time period. We also decided to connect them by placing little velcro spots on each end, this allows us to connect as many folders as we'd like into a long row to view a time period. I am completing my own set, my daughter is completing hers. This will allow me to have a sort of "master set" to follow with my boys over the next bunch of years as we continue to use Mystery of History. We did run into a problem with the idea of file folders because the early years we used one file folder for every 500 years(from creation through 500AD), simply because there wasn't enough information to use so many more folders. We reduced to stretches of 100 years from 500 through 1000AD, then dropped to 50 years for each folder from 1000 to 1900. Due to the fact that we have so much more history to include from this point on, we have one folder for each decade from 1900 through 2010. We also add in our own family tree within the timeline in those recent years, which was another reason for using single file folders for every ten years.