Before I get to the main part of my post, let me put in a quick plug for the Carnival of Super Foods at Kitchen Stewardship.  It begins on October 1st, which is just about a week away.  If you have (or would like to collect) recipes that would fit in with a whole foods and/or traditional foods diet, check it out!  The carnival will run for five weeks, and cover the following themes/categories: beans, broth, super foods, unprocessed (make-your-own) foods, and healthy fats.  I am really looking forward to this carnival.

Now, on to your regularly-scheduled blog post…

We have just this year begun using a variation of Workboxes for our homeschool.  (For those of you who are new to the idea of Workboxes, they are not a curriculum, but a method of organization.)  It’s taking some time for us to settle into something of a groove and figure out what works for us.  This is especially true in the area of planning – in other words, for me as the mama.  It was taking me forever to fill the boxes each night and, as a result, they just weren’t getting filled.  I put my problem-solving skills to work.  (I also got some ideas from the moms in the Workboxes Yahoo group, but those are another post.)  One of the major helps I came up with was these:

These are just 3×5-inch cards with instructions printed on them, laminated.  I printed out a card for each instruction I found myself – or imagined finding myself later – repeating over and over as explanation of Ariel’s workbox contents.  Some of these cards have blanks, or space to add writing.  For instance, “Look ____________ up in the encyclopedia.”  I also cut a few cards in half and printed times on them (5 minutes, 15 minutes, etc.) to add to open-ended but otherwise self-explanatory activities.  Although they aren’t pictured, I also laminated a few blank cards to write instructions on – a couple of 3×5-inch ones and four quarter-sheets of paper.  Unfortunately, I’m finding that dry erase doesn’t wipe off of them very cleanly, so I probably need to switch to wet-erase markers.