What’s in the Workbox Wednesday 5th Grade

Hi everyone! It’s time for a new 5th grade What’s in the Workbox Wednesday post! For those of you who missed it, you can check out my 2014 Curriculum post to see more details.

Today we’re taking a quick look at Turbo’s workboxes today, and as I said above he’s a 5th grader this year.  And I don’t like it. I want him to stop growing up right now.

At least he’s promised to stay with me forever.

For now anyway…

 

Drawer #1: Supplies, Daily Schedule, & Bible 

1) Like everyone, his top drawer houses our expandable drawer organizer and it holds all of the pencils, glue, erasers, scissors, and things he uses on a daily basis. It hangs on the drawer sides, so it can slide back and forth out of the way which is a nice feature. It also expands/contracts to fit most drawer sizes.

2) This drawer also holds our Picture Smart Bible student notebook, which is going great so far. This curriculum is great for elementary aged students. We do this as a group with my kindergartener, 3rd grader, 5th, and 6th grader. For the kindergartener she is just coloring in my teacher pages, but the others have the traceable pages in their spiral notebook. You can read more about how we use this program here.

3) It also has his weekly assignment printout. I get a lot of questions on this, and it’s just a report from www.homeschooltracker.com that I print and spiral bind for them. Granted a few things change over the year, so you might prefer to print this out on a weekly basis, but for the most part it works to help us keep track of our daily workload.

 

Drawer #2: Math  

This drawer houses all of our math stuff. Turbo is using Math U See Epsilon this year, so he has the fraction inserts along with the student workbook, test booklet, and DVD. I pull out his worksheet each day and lay it on top of the workbooks of he knows what to do. Although Math U See has plenty of word problems each day, I wanted them to have a little more practice, so like Strawberry Shortcake, Turbo is also doing a worksheet from the Evan-Moor Daily Word Problems 5 booklet. (You can’t see it in the photo, they workbooks are stacked on top of each other.)

 

Drawer #3: Spelling & Handwriting

1) Spelling: For spelling this year we’re doing a combination of the Spelling You See Level C and the All About Spelling Level 4 . I keep the teacher’s manual for All About Spelling stacked underneath so you can’t see it, but when he gets to his spelling drawer, he pulls it out and we do the lesson. Then he goes through and does his next page in the Spelling You See notebook which is mainly copy work so far. We’re still trying this out, so we’ll see if it helps with spelling later on when we do testing.

2) Handwriting: Turbo is working on BJU Handwriting 5 this year. I actually do not make him do this everyday depending on his workload. Since we’re also doing I.E.W. writing this year, that is a lot of writing. I know it’s not “handwriting” per-se, but at this point I’m counting it. What I’m trying to say is that if he has a lot of work in writing, then we skip handwriting for the day. I probably wouldn’t skip it if I were super concerned with his handwriting skills, but honestly he’s doing fine in this area.

 

Drawer #4: English, Reading, & Vocabulary

1) We also have the BJU Press English level 5 in this drawer. We moved back to BJU English this year and so far it’s going well. As with the other subjects, I normally pull out the day’s worksheet and place it on top of the workbook so he knows what to do each day.

2) And you might notice his Abeka Reading and  Read & Comprehend Skill Sheets 5 under the reading booklet. At the end of each week they do a test from these. They’re quick 5 minute reading comprehension drills that not only help with test taking, but also improve comprehension.

3) Vocabulary: I’m not sure why it’s not in this photo, but normally his vocabulary book is in this drawer as well. We’re using Vocabulary Workshop.

 

Drawer #5: Catch all drawer…

Drawer 5 is kind of a catch drawer because all of the little projects we’re working on pile up in there somehow. It’s clean right now because it’s the start of the year, but it houses our art lapbooks, any Classical Literature books he’s reading and that lapbook, and any other little projects we have going on.

1) History: We are using The Middle Ages unit from Homeschooling in the Woods this year. I’m so excited to be doing something fun and hands on since we’ve previously been using Abeka. Don’t get me wrong, Abeka is perfectly fine, it’s just not that exciting. So it’s nice to be going with something new this year. I’ll have a more formal review of what we think of this curriculum coming up, but you can read about how we organize and use it all in my Homeschool in the Woods post.

2) The green notebook is our Colorado Unit Study that we’re just finishing up. We had some left over from last year.

3) Writing: One thing that didn’t make it in the photo again for some reason is his Institute for Excellence in Writing binder. We are using this daily and so he normally keeps it in this bottom drawer.

 

Here are some other things that Turbo is doing this year, but that aren’t stored in his workboxes:

Art: World’s Greatest Artists 2 and See the Light Art DVDs

P.E.: Family Time Fitness

Robotics: LEGO Education We’re continuing with our co-op group and the Simple Mechanisms set this year.

Science: Abeka Science 5 & one of my scientist units if we can fit it in!

Typing: Typing Instructor Platinum (CD Version)

 

And that’s it for Turbo’s 5th grade boxes this year. So far the year is going well, and I’m happy with our curriculum choices. YAY!