I’ve been coming across the notion of workboxes on homeschooling blogs a fair bit lately.  The idea is that you put each child’s work for the day in a dedicated box/crate/tray, so that everything’s there to efficiently work through during the day, variously with and without parental involvement.  An optional extra seems to be little colour-coded laminated cards on treasury tags – I’m not totally sure where they fit in but it all seems to require a level of forward-planning and organisation I am neither capable of nor (fortunately) aspire to! Nothing against those for whom it is apparently a Godsend  – I love the diversity among us weird and wonderful home-educating folk and I know from my therapist training that we all see and function in the world in different ways – but as I educate only two children in an eclectic Charlotte Mason style, we do many subjects altogether (the children working at their own levels when they do things like narration and creating notebook pages), so workboxes would probably take more time than they save.

However one nugget of gold from these workbox discussions has managed to work its way into my homeschooling routine.  It sounds so blindingly obvious that I’m almost embarrassed to admit it … (drum roll please) … I now store all our current workbooks, manipulatives, living books etc in one box! One box I can bring over to the sofa in the evenings for the pleasant task of gathering resources and planning projects, one box I can pull up to the table after breakfast time –  an easy aide-memoire and toolbox for fun days learning at home, and – best of all – one box I can pop in the back of the car when we leave for the coast, ready to be brought out on a Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday…) before, after (on?!) the beach. I love being a homeschooler! 🙂