Workfolders

I’ve been hesitant to post anything school-wise as as a “works for me,” because so far this year our schooling is a mess.  However, it’s the difficulty of the 3-year-old that is making things “hairy,” and our actual school plan is working just fine – when we can manage it around the preschooler!  So I’m going to bite the bullet and share, in the hopes that maybe this will be beneficial to someone else, even while we’re trying to get past this trying time.

Today, I’m going to talk about our Workfolders.  I love the idea of Workboxes.  That they’re very concrete is a distinct benefit; however, they are so concrete that they aren’t a very practical approach (IMO) to schooling high schoolers.  So it’s our plan — ‘though we don’t have anything near high schoolers yet — to work from “real” Workboxes through a gradual progression to the most abstract type of school plan — a list that the children have to allocate time for, for themselves.

The Progression

For our littlest ones, we use actual Workboxes.

In early elementary school, we switch to a single workbox (a file box), with large Ziploc bags inside.  (This is what Ariel used last year.)

This year (3rd grade), Ariel has made the switch to workfolders.

I’ve seen others use folders that come already comb-bound together; I couldn’t find one with enough folders, so I bought two of these and then disassembled them and reassembled them so that I had one with twelve pockets and then another with the leftovers.  (I have no idea what we’ll use that for. By the way, I got mine at Staples, but they don’t have this exact item; they have a Staples-brand substitute.)

Each folder pocket contains an assignment.  If the assignment is a “loose paper” type of thing (a magazine article to read, a worksheet, etc.), the whole thing goes in the pocket.  If it’s something larger (a book to read, a page assignment in a textbook, etc.), just a note is placed in the pocket.  The whole set of workfolders goes into the file box, along with all of the books and things that Ariel uses on a daily or weekly basis, so they’re close at hand and all in one place.  (Any current library books in use for her reading assignments are usually in here, as well.)

This is a step toward the abstract for her, because the physical supplies for her assignments are not all gathered together as premade “packages” for her.  However, the pockets allow each assignment to be viewed as a single, stand-alone entity, just as with the original workboxes.  (Eventually, we will move to a simple list of assignments.)  So far, this seems to be working for us.