So far we are only in day 2 of our Mother Goose Time Nursery Rhymes theme for February and we are loving it. I printed out the coloring pages for this months theme in the member resources section of the Mother Goose Time website. Each color page goes with the days nursery rhyme, it has a cute picture and the nursery rhyme printed on it. After the month is finished they will each have a cute nursery rhyme book of their own. I can not wait to share all 20 of the nursery rhymes with my kids, some of them were ones I had forgotten until I flipped through the book, and then I couldn't believe I hadn't read them to my kids before.
As a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador we are given a monthly focus topic to think about while we are doing the lessons with our kids. This month is about assessments. Mother Goose Time gives you plenty of ways to assess the progress of your students. I started thinking about how I use assessment in our homeschool. Because I only have 2 students and they are at different levels of their education I do not use the assessment in the same way as someone who is using Mother Goose Time with a daycare or preschool might. I have plenty of opportunity to observe Preston and assess how he is doing. I wouldn't say that we do any formal assessments with him. I feel like where he is right now is exactly where he should be and I don't worry to much that he can't recite the whole alphabet yet or identify letters and sounds. He was/is still a slightly reluctant learner that is way to busy discovering life to sit down and focus on this stuff sometimes. I am just pleased that he is participating this year and that he is making progress. I figure if I let him do what he is ready to do then he will come around and want to learn more soon. He already is showing more interest in wanting to learn to write and read just by doing the Mother Goose Time activities and seeing his sister doing it. I just keep exposing him to everything and eventually it will all click.
I do use the Teacher Guide a lot to guide my observations of his progress. In the teacher guide there are assessment ideas for you to look for and notice with each activity. I usually look at those and pay attention to if he is meeting that or not. I also write under the activity little notes about what I noticed about him for the day. I look for things like was he engaged during the lesson, how was his attitude, was he ready and willing to learn, Did he do the activity, was he successful, what was difficult? I highlight the activities that we completed so I can quickly see what we did and did not get to during the day.
While I love having the assessment prompts in the teacher guide the majority of the assessing is being done just by my own observations and by what I am hearing and seeing in his daily life. Sometimes I will do a lesson and it will seem like he didn't grasp it, but later when he is playing with his sister I will notice that he is demonstrating knowledge of what I tried to teach him earlier. I like when I see this because a lot of the time he is hanging off his chair or crawling around the floor while I talk to him and I worry that he isn't even noticing that I am speaking to him. So to see later that he says something or uses a skill that I tried to teach him earlier makes me feel like everything is going to be ok.
Sometimes Preston gets in a mood that makes it very difficult to do school with him. When this happens I usually just let it go and start doing his sisters work. After she finishes a subject I will ask him if he would like to do an activity. if he says no then I play the game with his sister and that is usually enough to get him to come over and play with us. I try to not stress if he isn't feeling it that day, or if an activity is to much for him.
So today we did day 2, Sing a Song of Sixpence. I'll quickly walk you through the day and point out what I was assessing and how. I started off by having them color their nursery rhyme page while I read the suggested story, which by the way was a lovely story and they asked me to read it again.
After this I got my daughter set up to do her math test and then I worked with Preston on the Fill a Pie activity. It taught about shapes, patterns, and sorting. We used the shape beads manipulatives that came with this months box and we used the pocket cube and the cards. First I asked him to tell me what the shapes of the beads were. He was able to recall all the shapes of the beads and the colors. Then I asked him to sort them into groups. This made him nervous and he started to not want to participate so I quickly asked him to group them by shapes. When prompted he was able to do this quickly. Then I told him we could group them by color as well. He could also do this quickly. So by observing him do this activity I know that he can separate the items into groups, but that he can't decide how they should be sorted by himself yet. I also noticed that once we started rolling the cube he could count how many manipulatives were pictured on the card and that he could also pick out the correct beads and place them like the picture. We were working on numbers 1-6 last month so I can see that he is getting that, also his fine motor skills are improving. You can also see by the picture that sorting is made easier when sitting in a box.
After this I allowed him to play with the beads and the pie tins while I did my daughters reading lesson with her. Once we finished I had them both come make the play dough recipe with me that was provided on the Science card. These are always a hit! a few months ago we made a mud dough and some fake snow and they played with those for the rest of the day. I knew that this would be no different so we left this activity to the end. I wanted them to be able to play as long as they wanted with no interruptions. After the dough was made we took it to the table where the invitation to create activity was all set up.
They spent a long time rolling the dough and making their own pies. After they finished with the pies they decided to make cookies as well. They started playing a make believe bakery game where a boss got fired and my daughter had to step up and be the new boss. They were a birthday cake bakery and were busy making treats for parties. They had to keep sending kids out of the bakery because it wasn't a place for people to come in. I was making lunch and trying not to laugh because I knew they would stop playing if they knew I was paying attention. Their make believe play is always so detailed and if I listen I can hear things that I have taught them, that's when I know its been a successful day!
*Mother Goose Time has generously provided our curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*
As a Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassador we are given a monthly focus topic to think about while we are doing the lessons with our kids. This month is about assessments. Mother Goose Time gives you plenty of ways to assess the progress of your students. I started thinking about how I use assessment in our homeschool. Because I only have 2 students and they are at different levels of their education I do not use the assessment in the same way as someone who is using Mother Goose Time with a daycare or preschool might. I have plenty of opportunity to observe Preston and assess how he is doing. I wouldn't say that we do any formal assessments with him. I feel like where he is right now is exactly where he should be and I don't worry to much that he can't recite the whole alphabet yet or identify letters and sounds. He was/is still a slightly reluctant learner that is way to busy discovering life to sit down and focus on this stuff sometimes. I am just pleased that he is participating this year and that he is making progress. I figure if I let him do what he is ready to do then he will come around and want to learn more soon. He already is showing more interest in wanting to learn to write and read just by doing the Mother Goose Time activities and seeing his sister doing it. I just keep exposing him to everything and eventually it will all click.
I do use the Teacher Guide a lot to guide my observations of his progress. In the teacher guide there are assessment ideas for you to look for and notice with each activity. I usually look at those and pay attention to if he is meeting that or not. I also write under the activity little notes about what I noticed about him for the day. I look for things like was he engaged during the lesson, how was his attitude, was he ready and willing to learn, Did he do the activity, was he successful, what was difficult? I highlight the activities that we completed so I can quickly see what we did and did not get to during the day.
Another way Mother Goose Time has built in different assessments for you to use is by starring certain activities. These activities tell you to use them in the child's portfolio or as something you can send home with the child to show the parents how they are doing. You can either choose to take a picture of the starred activity and write about what is going on or you can write directly on the back of the assignment. We don't use this as much as we use the daily assessments with each activity and the notes section. I do usually look at the starred selections though. If it fits with what we are focusing on with my son then I will use it as more of a formal type of assessment . That only means that if it is an activity that produces a finished piece of work then I will keep the item and write notes on the back of it and then keep it in the portfolio folder that I am keeping for him. This is mainly so I can pull it out at the end of the year to show him how his work has changed from the beginning of the year. Also if there was ever any question about what I have been doing with him I would have that as something to show.
While I love having the assessment prompts in the teacher guide the majority of the assessing is being done just by my own observations and by what I am hearing and seeing in his daily life. Sometimes I will do a lesson and it will seem like he didn't grasp it, but later when he is playing with his sister I will notice that he is demonstrating knowledge of what I tried to teach him earlier. I like when I see this because a lot of the time he is hanging off his chair or crawling around the floor while I talk to him and I worry that he isn't even noticing that I am speaking to him. So to see later that he says something or uses a skill that I tried to teach him earlier makes me feel like everything is going to be ok.
Sometimes Preston gets in a mood that makes it very difficult to do school with him. When this happens I usually just let it go and start doing his sisters work. After she finishes a subject I will ask him if he would like to do an activity. if he says no then I play the game with his sister and that is usually enough to get him to come over and play with us. I try to not stress if he isn't feeling it that day, or if an activity is to much for him.
So today we did day 2, Sing a Song of Sixpence. I'll quickly walk you through the day and point out what I was assessing and how. I started off by having them color their nursery rhyme page while I read the suggested story, which by the way was a lovely story and they asked me to read it again.
After this we did the Blackbird Letters activity. He doesn't know his letters very well yet so I wasn't surprised that he couldn't tell me what the letter was. I told him it was the letter I, then we practiced saying it. I read the Rhyme Time poster to them and then encouraged him to find all the I's and cover them with the blackbirds. He was able to do this pretty quickly. When we were finished I asked him what the letter was and he said "pie". So we practiced saying it again and then I hung the letter card on the wall. We will review this as part of our morning calendar routine.
After this I allowed him to play with the beads and the pie tins while I did my daughters reading lesson with her. Once we finished I had them both come make the play dough recipe with me that was provided on the Science card. These are always a hit! a few months ago we made a mud dough and some fake snow and they played with those for the rest of the day. I knew that this would be no different so we left this activity to the end. I wanted them to be able to play as long as they wanted with no interruptions. After the dough was made we took it to the table where the invitation to create activity was all set up.
They spent a long time rolling the dough and making their own pies. After they finished with the pies they decided to make cookies as well. They started playing a make believe bakery game where a boss got fired and my daughter had to step up and be the new boss. They were a birthday cake bakery and were busy making treats for parties. They had to keep sending kids out of the bakery because it wasn't a place for people to come in. I was making lunch and trying not to laugh because I knew they would stop playing if they knew I was paying attention. Their make believe play is always so detailed and if I listen I can hear things that I have taught them, that's when I know its been a successful day!
*Mother Goose Time has generously provided our curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*
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