Childfolio Assessment – Heights Reads

I lovingly (and jokingly) will ask my husband when paperwork needs to be filled out if he’d like me to fill it out for him. It’s not that his handwriting is bad, it’s just different than my handwriting and the detail that I put into making sure what I’m writing is legible, especially when it comes to important documents.

My oldest is still working on his penmanship, and I know that he’s probably slightly behind his peers on his handwriting skills, mainly because of his vision impairment during his Preschool years. Some things simply got left out of our day to day routine, as we spent more time focusing on distracting him to keep his patch over his good eye to build up his weaker eye. My daughter loves to write, draw, doodle, color…you name it and she’s doing it! I know that I’ve mentioned before Theo’s hesitation in writing, and I’m so please with how he’s been doing lately! Thank you, Mother Goose Time!

It’s been so easy to see the progress that my younger two have made in just a few short weeks by naturally observing their skills when working on our lessons together, and also through a casual observation when they’re playing together or independently. It’s called Authentic Assessment for a reason, and I’ve taken some steps back this week in observing their lessons, focusing primarily on Theo’s recognition of the letters in his name and his first name, and in how Charlotte chooses to use her writing materials, especially when printing her name.

I grabbed these wipe-clean pocket folders from Target in the Dollar Spot mid-summer. They’ve come in so handy! This month I slipped their writing plate that corresponds with this month’s theme. For Theo, I drew on two of the name plates: once using all capital letters, and the second time using the right way to print his name with both upper and lower case letters.

Cross-referencing the Developmental Continuum, I’m able to keep track of this Authentic Assessment to add to Theo’s portfolio.

Charlie’s working hard on remembering to hold her writing tool the correct way each time!

We did some traveling this week too to Atlanta for a wedding. I love these Wipe-Clean cards from Usborne Books & More to engage the kids and entertain them while I can quietly sip coffee in restaurants.

Authentic Assessment in action! Observing how my children handle their materials when drawing, doodling, and drawing. It’s great to see their creativity at work!

What did you observe this week? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Keep Reading!

Beth

As a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador, I receive Mother Goose Time curriculum in exchange for my honest and authentic stories resulting from personal experiences in implementing this curriculum with my children. All opinions and thoughts are my own and are in no way influenced by others.

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So, this week during our Homeschool Preschool lessons from Mother Goose Time, there was a lot of learning going on for my trio. More importantly, I also learned something equally important: my children love to be told stories about each of them. I know I’ve shared their birth stories with them on different occasions etc., but what was so great about our lesson this past week was taking the time to remind them how we’re all alike, and how we’re also different from one another.

Here are some of our highlights from this past week:

The Teacher Guide provides the blueprint of what we’re doing each day. We got some help with our Creative Arts lesson with Self-Portraits and learning about Pablo Picasso. We did consult one of our Usborne Books to see if this particular title had more information on Picasso before we headed to the internet. This book does not highlight Picasso or his works, but the children did see other examples of self-portraits.

My youngest, who just turned three at the end of July. He’s very apprehensive to try new things, and I love that he sat and worked on his self-portrait. We discussed his eye and hair color, what shape he thinks his nose in, and how his face is different than mine and how it’s also the same.

My oldest and middle really enjoyed seeing the different body designs that could be made using the tangram shapes and shape design mats, which were both provided for Table Top Math. Through this process, I was able to see if my children could use the tangrams to recreate the puzzle pictures. After the puzzles were completed, they took the process one step further to then recreate their own Tangram Bodies by pressing the pieces into Modeling Magic.

After Theo and I worked on Tangram Bodies together, I let him use the Tangrams open-ended to see how he would manipulate materials. By using the Benchmark guide provided to me in the back of my Teacher Lesson book, I was able to document where he is developmentally with Mathematics and Reasoning. Using Benchmark 18.2, he is able to sort objects by one feature, such as size or color. In the pictures above, Theo sorted the tangrams based on their size, and stacked each Tangram based on their size. He was also able to use deductive reasoning skills to tell me which of the shapes were bigger when given two like objects and two different objects. This is Benchmark 19.1

It’s not necessary to consider every move that my children are making when completing these lessons, but from an educational standpoint, I’m able to look at the Benchmark guide and see where my children are excelling at from a developmental standpoint. It’s nice to to jot down a quick note in the back of the guide to compile together in their Childfolio Assessment.

What did you learn this week about your child? I’d love to hear about it!

Keep Reading!

Beth

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Heights Reads

Raising Readers. Random Ramblings. Finding Happiness in the Heights.

Tag: Childfolio Assessment

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