Work boxes

For this year, we have decided to give work boxes a try and see how it works for our family. I have very high hopes that this will streamline a lot of our schooling and help us to be more efficient with our time. I feel like over the last year we had a steep learning curve balancing schooling four children, and while I definitely feel like we got into a routine that worked, there is always room for improvement. 

Earlier this week, my amazing husband created all the files I needed. We are using strips in the kids colors to put their daily tasks on, then the tasks have a coordinating task card on a box. Because we have specifically chosen to use Sonlight for the ability to combine kids for core subjects with ease, and we teach in pairs that share books, each pair will have a set of drawers verses each individual child. For the task cards, I found images on google that I liked, that had both a picture and a word so that they work for both readers and non-readers. We then printed those, their strips, and a set of numbers (also color coded) for each child on card stock, had them laminated, and I spent an hour and a half cutting them apart and applying Velcro dots. I'm rather pleased with the finished product! 

As you can see, all the task cards were printed on white card stock, while their task strips and numbers were printed on colored card stock. I admit by the time I was done cutting them apart I was on the verge of stabbing my eyes out, but it was worth it. We only have six task cards so far, plus two "help buttons" per child (for when they are working independently and need my help to finish), but I plan to make more. This is what I needed to get started this coming week, and time was limited the day Rich made everything for me, so it is what it is for now.

The way we plan to do this is each day, each child will have their task cards filled with what they need to do that day, in the order I want them to do it. The items they will need for each task is then placed in the correct drawer, and on the front of the drawer on the right will be that task, and on the left the correct number in each of the two children's colors. As they complete a task, they will take their number card as well as their task card from their strip and put it in the "finished" box. Once they have completed their entire task card, they are done for the day and can work on their chores and then have free time. Their task strips will be hole punched and put on a key ring, but my hole punch is currently hiding from me so I'm unable to do that part quite yet.

We decided to use Trofast shelves from IKEA. Many people (most that I've seen in my research) use bins created for scrapbook supplies, but after reading reviews I was a bit nervous they wouldn't be sturdy enough. With Sonlight, there are a lot of books, so I need something strong enough for that, but equally important, my kids just tend to be hard on stuff. These were not too much more, and I know from years of using them for toys that they can withstand my kiddos. 

I'm excited to see how things go this week, and will be updating with our initial thoughts after week one, so stay tuned!

Sonlight series, Entry 3

We have been using Sonlight for a couple of weeks now. The first week was a bit of a learning curve for sure, but i have to say, so far we are really loving the curriculum. 

My initial thoughts were all fairly positive. They do a really great job laying out how to do things the first week, and then it follows a consistent pattern after that. It is very easy to teach with for sure.

I really love the books they include, and love even more than I thought I would that they aren't all books written for their curriculum (although there are a couple that are). The first couple of readers Elli has read are not only having her work on reading and reading comprehension, but they are stories that are also teaching pieces of history, they use them to have the children practice their handwriting through copy work, and they even include a bit of geography by having you find the location of where the book takes place on a map.

I haven't found that it takes too much time to work through everything. This may or may not change as we get further into the curriculum, we will have to wait and see. I have tweaked how we do spelling, as I have one child that has yet to not know how to spell a single spelling word and one that struggles so hard she fights tears, but the awesome thing is it doesn't make it difficult to tweak.

My only complaint this far is with the pre-k curriculum. The girls have not enjoyed only reading one or two pages, have hated the one book that has long stories, and honestly seem mostly bored when we read little snid bits of this book and that. They love the activity books, and we are continuing to work through everything despite a lack of enthusiasm. My hope is they will enjoy it more as we continue. Again, we will have to wait and see!

Sonlight series, entry 2

This post is rather past due, but here it is!

My very first thought when I opened the box from Sonlight was "this is a lot of books". It was a tad overwhelming. 

The even more overwhelming part came when I looked at the teacher guides. You have to put them in the binder yourself (unless you pay $30 for them to do it for you), and I had a moment of anxiety. I went to the Sonlight website and ultimately found a video that explains how to put them together. Very helpful!

It took me about an hour to put the binders together. I decided to put all four of my kids stuff together so I would not be switching from binder to binder, and I had to use two binders to fit it all. Not so bad, and I love how easy they make everything, the guides are awesome!

It took a while to separate all the books between core, 3rd grade readers, and 1st grade readers. There IS a page in each teacher manual that shows the books and even what week you start using them, but it took me a bit to find it.

Overall, it was pretty intimidating opening the box, but it was also very exciting! I really enjoyed looking through all the awesome books, and it definitely had me very excited to start school.

Sonlight Series, Entry 1

We recently made the decision to switch to Sonlight for our homeschooling. This will be my first blog in a series on the curriculum, starting with explaining why we decided to make the switch as well as some money saving tips, and covering first thoughts when we receive the curriculum, thoughts after the first couple of weeks of using it, and then periodically throughout the year touching on things that we love, and, if applicable, things that we do not love. At the end of the year I will give a final overview on what Rich and I thought, what the kids thought, and how well our children learned with it.

*Disclaimer* I am not being compensated for this in any manor. These are my own thoughts, and where applicable Rich and the kid's thoughts.


Before now, we have been using a mix of various curriculum, and I was beginning to feel rather overwhelmed realizing that I would now be trying to balance that for three separate levels. It has honestly been enough of a challenge to balance time for everything for just two kids.

I have always thought full curriculum was not for us. I liked to be able to customize things more, and hated how expensive it was, and how hard it was to find every single piece you needed used, because you need tons of pieces that are only available new from them. I also really prefer learning through literature verses doing lots of worksheets.

The first thing that attracted me to Sonlight was the amount of reading. A lot of the curriculum is reading together. Yes, there are still work sheets that the kids are supposed to do, but they are limited and mostly focused on teaching children to love to write. I think this is great, as I love writing. Even with that aspect, though, I was really turned off by the price, and the amount of time it would take me to teach three levels with this. Then my friend told me about something awesome that they offer. They actually make it easy to group kids that are close enough in age together so that they are doing a lot of the core work together, drastically reducing the teaching time required. It also cuts down on the price a good deal. Lastly, I did find out that they offer time payments. They will break your total into four payments, the first is due immediately, then they have different lengths of time available for the other three payments. It is interest free. This helped us as our payments are almost exactly what we set aside for school needs every two months, so that is the option we went with. If we stick with this curriculum next year, I will budget ahead of time and be prepared to pay up front since I truly hate owing money, but it was definitely a nice option that helped us make the decision to go ahead and dive in for this year.

I will also mention that for the girl's Pre-Kindergarten things, I tracked most of them down used. I also did this with Tobiah's readers, although I could not find two books in particular (or at least not for less expensive than Sonlight offered them) so I ended up ordering those. It did help that we had several of Tobiah's readers already (which is GREAT! I certainly love that Sonlight uses regular books verses books only offered through them for the majority of their teaching), and one of the girl's books. I managed to save about $200 by ordering the books this way. I likely could have managed to save more, but it was already pretty overwhelming to track the long list of books I had down, and the thought of doing that for more was a bit too much for me to handle in a short amount of time. I feel like I picked a good middle ground between making things a bit easier on myself and saving money. Again, assuming we continue to be happy with the choice we made to switch to Sonlight, I will likely work on tracking down the list for next year all year long, eliminating the need to make a choice between saving money and not completely overwhelming myself. The one thing I want to ensure that I do, though, is to buy at least ONE core from them each year, as this gets you a 10% off all purchases made for an entire year, as well as free shipping on all orders. This has already come in handy with a book that I thought I had found, only to have the seller refund my money. I could not find it inexpensively anywhere else and managed to get it for very cheap from Sonlight-the one I originally bought that was refunded was only 50 cents cheaper than ordering from Sonlight.

The things that I did make a point of just buying new were all the teachers guides, which come with the student worksheets and really everything you need but books themselves for the older kids. For the younger girls I had to buy four work books each, but they were not terribly priced. You can find the teachers guides used on various websites where people sell their used curriculum, and I also found them at Homeschool Potpourri here in Washington (but remember, even if you are from out of state you can call Homeschool Potpourri and make a phone purchase!), but for this year at least I decided to just buy them new. If I can find them in good enough shape for next year, I may do things differently. We will just have to wait and see.

So, there you have it. A big and exciting update about our homeschool journey, the reasons why I decided to make the switch, and a few pointers to save some money. Check back soon for my next post in this series about our first impression when receiving the curriculum.