I like to have official assessments for my kids, even though I often have a very good idea of what they know before we sit down to assess. My main reason for doing them is just to have my kids used to being tested and assessed so that it is never a cause for fear or trepidation when they are older.
So, when the little one wrapped up letter “Z”, I pulled out my fun Chicka Boom Tree assessments and some stampers (like these). The first time I used these assessments with my son, I admit I was at a total loss as to how to use them, and I made the whole ordeal much more complicated than it needed to be. This time, though, I just relaxed and let her tell me what she knew. She chose which letter to do each time, told me the name and sound of the letter, then stamped it before choosing another letter. It went very smoothly.
For the numbers, I once again handed her the stamp and sat back to see what she knew. She found each number in order as she counted, up to twelve and then got stumped. I praised her, put the stamp away, and then we finished counting the numbers together.
Her end-of-the-year preschool accomplishments:
- She can identify all her letters and sounds for capital and little letters.
- She can identify her numbers up to 12 and can count to 20 unassisted.
- She can count to 100 when assisted with the tens (20, 30, 40, etc.—she gets stumped at these transitions).
- She knows her colors and the names of basic shapes.
- She has lots of fun memories and can’t wait to start reading.
And if nothing else, that last accomplishment tells me we’ve had a very successful year.
That’s a great idea for those non testing years. I was recently reading through the scope and sequence for the year trying to tick off what we’d covered already, but something like this would be a lot more fun for them to do!
I found your “growingrace” page and it is very interesting. I have a 5 yrs old kid that is eager to learn. He is in a pre-kinder regular school but I want to give him some homeschooling with Abeka by myself. My oldest son studied his elementary school with A Beka curriculum and it was extraordinary. I never do homeschooling before but I want to try together with the regular and normal school curriculum. Your postings have been very interesting for me. I just bought some books like: A Beka K5 Phonics, Reading, & Writing Curriculum, O can read, I do read, etc…. not yet the numbers because he wants to read.
Any suggestions?
My advice would be to keep it light and keep it fun. Especially if you are doing this in addition to what he is doing in regular school, I would not follow the A Beka curriculum strictly. Let it guide you and keep you on track, but do not feel that you have to do it all in one day. Have fun! And let me know if you run into any problems.