Work Boxes: Why and How

At a homeschool park day a couple weeks ago one of the other moms mentioned work boxes. I nodded (un)knowingly and vowed to look up what in the world she was talking about. Work boxes are a fairly new idea that are spreading like wildfire. The most informative site I found is here. She did a better job than I can of telling how it got started and what it entails as well as providing tons of examples of what to put in the boxes.

I'll just give you a 2 second overview of my version.
The kids are to work on the boxes sequentially, though they can decide when to work together on the together boxes. The top shelf is for one kid, the next shelf for the other and the bottom shelf is for them to work on together (since, as twins, a lot of their materials are the same). Anything that doesn't fit IN the boxes goes next to them. Some part of the activity is IN the box.

Now that I've snapped a picture for the world to see I will add labels to the front that have my kids' name and a number 1-4. The lady who created this idea suggests 12 boxes a day, but I think this number will be perfect for my kindergarteners. We'll find out tomorrow!

Three reasons I love this concept -
#1 - They can see how much they are expected to do each day and can see their progress. Whenever there is a system, the "fault" lies more with the system than with mom. This should diminish the "how much more?" arguments. They will be responsible for their own learning now.
#2 - There are SO many fun projects I forget to do. In the midst of dealing with the day, I don't have time or energy to get out everything for the fun stuff. Prince keeps asking to work on his lapbook but it's always "as soon as I put the baby down for a nap" or "right after lunch" and it keeps not happening because several things need to come out for us to do it. Now I can prepare the night before which brings us to
#3 - When mom is busy, they can still do work. That gives them a little more autonomy and gives me a bit of a break w/o missing all the cool school stuff we want to do. It also allows one to do something productive instead of "go play while I give your brother his piano lesson".