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In light of recent frustration over multiplication facts, I have realized that updated versions of the girls’ mini offices may be a fantastic idea! They made some a few years ago and used them briefly, but at the time, they consisted of things like colors, numbers, and the printed alphabet for H and addition, coins, and days of the week for K.
For H, I wanted to include things that she was currently working on, in addition to the things that I hope to include in her studies later in the year. As a minimum, I wanted to have an addition table, Roman numerals, a chart of the colors of Math-U-See blocks, place value, coins, capitalization rules, books of the Bible, and months of the year.
I still had the saved files that contained the days of the week, months of the year, and books of the Bible that were done in Word format, so I printed those up first. Then I began a search for mini offices on Google, where I found tons of great JPG files and PDFs to download and print. I found some great, ready to use files on abcteach.com, and squidoo.com provided links to many more. For math, I was lucky enough to come across a wonderful blog post, where the author had already done all the work of putting together a PDF that coincides with Math-U-See.
Then, it came down to how exactly did I want to do the mini office. I had originally planned on doing one that had the folder flaps folded and then glued together like how we normally do a lapbook, but then I ran across a nice accordion-shaped one. I ultimately decided to go with what I knew, and I think it turned out well.
Armed with the printed materials and some of my favorite file folders, I set to work. The result was one folder of MUS references, one folder with additional math references (and the books of the Bible), and one folder with grammar references. I plan on getting these laminated individually before I attach them to one another, but first I want to get a copy of our cursive alphabet small enough to put in the empty space on the grammar folder.
Edit (6/4/18): Unfortunately, the website that contained the Math-U-See mini office printable is no longer online, so I had to remove the link.
These look great! Well organized and easy for them to reference. Sometimes seeing things over and over and over again can make all the difference in learning.
Exactly! It’s a great help for when they’re doing their daily work!
Very useful tool and looks great too!
Thank you! And thanks again for your help! 😉
A great visual idea for the kids to learn. I might be using it with my high schooler.
I think I’m going to make one with my 2nd grader next week, too. I’ll have to ask my older two if they’d like one. 🙂