More Workboxes

One of my goals this summer is to create many additional "work box" items for ages two to four. I find that those ages cause a lot of mischief, noise, and distraction if left wandering around during school time.

Last night I stayed up late printing free work box activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler and laminating them. I included the necessary supplies in each Ziplock bag, so if an activity requires a pair of dice or a white board pen or some plastic magnetic letters, I included those in the Ziplock bag. All I have to do is grab a bag and hand it to a little child, no gathering of supplies!

Now I have about 30 homemade workbox activities!

Just for fun this morning while doing summer school with John, I introduced Margaret (2 years 3 months) to her first-ever Official School.

"Margaret, would you like to do school time with Mama?"

"Yes!" She ran over as fast as her chubby legs would carry her. As we worked together doing the Number Dot Cards, Margaret shrieked at any sibling who wandered over to watch, "Go away! I doing school time with Mama!" We have to work on her natural selfish tendencies, but her enthusiasm was darling.

She announced, "I doing math!" I thought that was neat because I didn't tell her this was math, but she recognized that she was working with numbers, the same way John and Mary work with numbers when they are doing that thing called math.

She took her school time so seriously, I could hardly stand the cuteness.

When Chris saw me laminating the night away last evening, he had the brilliant idea to assign Mary to teach Margaret. I tried it today with great success.

1. It is helping teach the four-year-old patience. She began whining halfway through that she didn't know how to teach Margaret, so I did some modeling for her, which Mary immediately began imitating and then she beamed with pleasure.

2. It occupied two children so I could focus on the third child's math lesson.

3. It is actually teaching the two-year-old material she doesn't know.

"Margaret, can you push the two pumpkin pieces together?"

"Margaret, this is a star."

If any reader has suggestions for other sources from which to create work box activities--especially free ones--please post them in the comments section!