Workboxes - Organizational Heaven

Our workboxes arrived on Thursday. Of course I put them together immediately, and am in love! The night before I can put all our activities for the day into the workboxes, and then label each box with a cute number. Then the next morning we are set to go, Big Monkey knows how many boxes we have to do, and how much he has left. That and he LOVES going to get his own activity now instead of waiting for me to get the next one. I see now though that 6 activities for one day is not enough for Big Monkey. Not that any one activity keeps his attention for long. We still only spent 47 minutes on "preschool" yesterday. 

So lets see if I can remember all 6 activities. The first was a scarecrow puzzle. Big Monkey had a hard time even though the pieces were numbered. So we talked about what number comes after 1, and then I helped him slide up the next piece. Then what comes after 2 and so on. We completed it together and he was excited to see what it was! 

Then I let him use M&Ms to "count" with our numbered pumpkins. If he could place M&Ms all the way up to number 7, then he could eat them. We started with 1-5 and he did that so quickly and easily that I thought I'd throw in 6 and 7. He struggled more with those. I think mainly because he wanted to eat the candy. Was this my brightest idea? Maybe not. It motivated him to count, but man, the after effects of the candy seemed to be a slightly cranky toddler that kept asking for more candy all the way until nap time. Might stick with cheerios or something healthier next time (raisins maybe?).

Big Monkey then tackled his first connect the dots page. He thought that was fun. The first time he just tried drawing all over the paper while counting to 10. I coached him to try again and follow the dots to see if it would make a picture. He did great! I had to show him on the first few to push a little harder with his pencil as he tends to use very, very light pressure. He couldn't quite figure out it was an acorn, but liked it anyway. 

Then he did a do a dot paper. He really loves these things. I got markers from Oriental Trading Company, and they don't say washable (not sure if the markers from Amazon are either) so I was a little nervous when he wiped the sleeve of his brand new shirt through the wet dots. Didn't seem to cause any harm thank goodness. Baby Monkey tried to get in on this action too, which Big Monkey was very unhappy about. 

Then we tried patterning again. I didn't get a photo of that as I was engaged with Big Monkey to help him understand the concept of patterns. He's getting there. We still just spent most of the time laughing about how a pumpkin does not look like a scarecrow. He kept telling me the pumpkin was next in the scarecrow, leaf, scarecrow, leaf pattern. He thought it was funny. Pill. 

I finished up our activity list with a bean bag toss. He takes our homemade "beanbags" (they are actually made of rice) and tosses them into my trashcan. Obviously, it's not being used as a trashcan anymore. I didn't get a photo of this either. I think I was tending to Baby Monkey, who was determined to get my attention the entire morning. He started by dirtying his diaper while I was trying to help Big Monkey with the puzzle. 

Doesn't Baby Monkey just look thrilled to be doing preschool on a Friday???