Workboxes-3 Month Update

I blogged about the concept of workboxes back in May. The whole concept appealed to me for a few reasons

• structure
• independence
• variety of activities
• organization

We started strong and saw some definite benefits. Within 2 days my son had learned to ask for his "work" and he'd go to the cabinet, pick out one box and take the activity to the table and complete it. This was my ideal of independence, not wandering randomly around the house choosing what he wanted to do but instead making small choices within very specific boundaries of which activities, how to do them, and where to do them. He neatly cleaned up workboxes after playing with each one and knows he is only allowed to take out a new one after he has cleaned up the other one.

So here is when I would recommend this system:

1) your child gets out several toys at once without putting the previous ones away and needs practice with that.
2) your child likes goal-oriented play, or play with a purpose.
3) you have an immense amount of time and motivation.
4) you have a natural creative streak.

For me, while I LOVED seeing my son fall right into the orderly habits that make this system work, and while he still enjoys the activities, we lost interest really quickly. The prep time to come up with new, fun activities he could do independently was just too much even with me being a homemaker. The slightest bump in our household routine (vacation, family visiting, or sickness) meant the workboxes got neglected for a week or more, I'd get discouraged, and we had trouble getting back into the groove of things.

For us we also struggled because we do not have a lot of toys. That may sound awful but really it's never been a problem except that I could see if we had the money and willingness to buy several learning toys the prep time for workboxes would be drastically reduced. As it is we like our clutter-free living room and the fact that a wooden train set can keep Tobias' interest for an entire month :)

I'm still considering whether there are ways to make this system work for us, because I worry that if our next child is a more hands-on learner he might need something like this. Any ideas to reduce the prep time involved? Any ideas for the creatively challenged moms trying to do this? I'm seriously not creative, the preschool age range is out of my comfort zone so these activities do not come naturally to me.

For now though, I think we will mostly move on to a different format for learning time, something more free-flowing and literature/art based since that is definitely within my comfort zone :)