Good morning everyone. Welcome to another What’s in the Workbox Wednesday! Today we’ll be sharing our workboxes for Strawberry Shortcake who is currently in the 5th grade.
As you can see her first box contains supplies and our famous Daily Learning Notebook. I found our expandable drawer organizer at the Container Store.
I realize Strawberry Shortcake is in 5th grade and does not need to do the daily notebook any longer, but they all love it and requested to do it this year again. She’s doing the cursive daily learning notebook.
Strawberry Shortcake (5th grade)
- Art: World’s Greatest Artists 2 and See the Light Art DVDs
- Bible: Grapevine Studies, and Kay Arthur Discover 4 yourself
- Spelling: All About Spelling
- English/Grammar: Rod & Staff English 4
- Reading: Abeka 5
- Math: Math U See Epsilon
- History: Abeka History
- Literature: Classical Literature Units
- Music: World’s Greatest Composers Vol 1 (Continued from last year)
- Robotics: LEGO Education We’re using the Simple Mechanisms set this year.
- Science: Abeka Science, & some of my scientist units.
- P.E.: Family Time Fitness
- Piano: Piano is Easy (We’re starting with Teach Yourself Piano Step by Step)
- Handwriting: BJU Handwriting 5
- Typing: Typing Instructor (CD Version, each of them has their own login)
- Vocabulary: Wordly Wise 5 (This is our first year trying this so our thoughts on it are still TBD.)
- Writing: Write Shop Junior D (cont. from last year) mixed with Institute for Excellence in Writing
The next box contains everything she needs to do math. We’re currently using Math U See Epsilon. (I realize the photo has the Delta unit in it, we had a couple weeks left to finish from last year before moving on to Epsilon this year.) Each day after school is over I pull out the next day’s worksheet and lay it on top of her book. That way she knows what is to be done.
The next box contains our BJU Handwriting 5 and Rod & Staff English 4. So far we like both of these programs. I was advised to use a grade level down since we’re just starting and so far that advice is proving to be accurate.
Her next box contains Wordly Wise 4 and BJU Press Spelling 5 along with All About Spelling. We’re currently using the BJU Spelling for a more difficult word list, but I still prefer the phonics lessons that go with the All About Spelling program. So we do a quick lesson, then she does her BJU Word list.
And her last box contains a couple things. First is the World’s Greatest Composers Vol 1, Grapevine Studies (the green binder), and her Abeka Reading 4 and Read & Think Skill sheets. If you haven’t tried the Read & Think Skill sheets, I highly recommend them! They’re short timed reading drills with comprehension questions. It’s a great way to get used to doing those pesky comprehension sections in the standardized testing units.
As you can see the group activities such as art, PE, science, history, typing, etc. are not kept in our workboxes, since we only have 5 drawers we really put our more independent and core work in there. Then we do the group stuff together either before or after our workboxes depending on the day and my mood :o)
After school is done each day I will re-fill the drawers with his new work for the next day. It usually just takes a couple minutes per student to pull out the new work. But it spares me chaos in the morning since we’re ready to go.
Have some great workbox ideas to share? Make sure to leave a comment below!
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Love these posts!
Erica, you mentioned using the reading comprehension to help out with standardized testing. I’m wondering if you feel that doing MUS is enough for math in regard to what’s required for a child to do well on standardized testing? I’m currently using MUS (just started it this year), but am wondering if this will affect how my kids do on their testing, due to the different scope an sequence. I’d love to hear your take on it! It seems to me at one point that you were using two maths?!? Abeka, maybe? I could be wrong on that one.
Many blessings as you school your sweet little ones this year! 🙂
I can’t speak for Erica, but my 7th grader has been using MUS since K and she has never scored below the 98th percentile on standardized tests. There have been a couple of years where there was a topic or two not covered by MUS but she was able to figure out the problems on her own thanks to the understanding of “why” she gets from MUS. And let me assure you, she is not a math genius.
Thank you so much for going through these workboxes in such detail. I am getting ready to pull my 6th grader and 2nd grader out of public school and start homeschooling them within the next month. I work full time out of the home and was trying to figure out a way to make sure that the kids know what to do during the day when I am not home. I think this is it!! I also love the daily notebook, especially for my 2nd grader as she is not very good with money or time or days of week, etc. This will be an awesome way to help her with this while making it fun and nonthreatening. I will probably forego the notebook for my 6th grade son. I think he would just roll his eyes, lol. But I plan on having him include in his journal things like the weather on occasion just for something different.
Very cool. I was wondering how often you do P.E., Robotics and Vocabulary each week? Do you homeschool on a 4-day or 5 day schedule?
Hello Erica, how do you go about the lapbooks? Do you have them all printed out already? How do you choose from one another? Which one to start out with? Thanks, Julie…
Hi Erica, thank you so much for sharing so much of your knowledge with so many and thank you for all the resources! My fifth grader LOVES the daily learning notebook. I downloaded it for my first and third grader but my fifth grader requested it too.
Erica, how do you get this scheduled and completed. I have half this and can’t get the girls to complete assignments. Can you give some suggestions or advice? Do you have one day for curriculum A and another day for curriculum B? I spend time preparing and feel completely drained and weary right now. I need prayers and refreshing. My focus has been lost and Satan has gotten a hold and it is knee dropping.
Any advice and guidance would be great as a tool, I never follow what others do because it is not the same for all.
Thanks for all you blog about.