Authentic Assessment: Squirrel Math

First, please accept my apology for such awful photos.  I don't know why my camera on my phone has such a hard time focusing.  Ugh.

But I wanted to talk about Authentic Assessment today.

Wikipedia defines it as:

"Authentic assessment tends to focus on contextualised tasks, enabling students to demonstrate their competency in a more 'authentic' setting. Examples of authentic assessment categories include:

• performance of the skills, or demonstrating use of a particular knowledge

• simulations and role plays

• studio portfolios, strategically selecting items

Squirrel Math from our Mother Goose Time Orchard Harvest is a perfect example.

My girl role played 4 different math problem cards using actual acorns, a picture of a squirrel, a flower garden, and a magnetic tree.

This was a great beginning to understanding addition.  We also practiced subtraction with a few of our problems. 

Although this activity didn't take long, I could see that she understood addition pretty well, but we definitely needed more practice in the area of subtraction.  

Quick and easy assessment by observing the child.

In preschool, all there is is authentic assessment.  Role playing, portfolios, and demonstration of learning is the only way to understand the knowledge of preschoolers.  It's so sad how we have left that so far behind in our high-stakes testing in public education.  I lived that world for 8 years.

It is devastating to watch your little 3rd graders so nervous they are sick on the day of the test.

I can not tell you how often I was asked, "Is this going to be on the test?" As if only that information or knowledge was worth learning.

Or how many things I could not teach because there was not enough time due to having to cover everything that was going to be on the test.  

It's a huge reason on why we have chosen to homeschool our children- 

to take them from the test and actually see them learn... really learn, and enjoy the process of it all.

To give them the opportunity to learn just for the gift of learning.

I am so grateful we can homeschool.  

Creating Caterpillar Patterns

I don't know about you, but it has been raining ALL month long here. 

However we still have tons of fun when we are stuck indoors thanks to our preschool curriculum: Mother Goose Time.  We've looked at all the parts of a tree including the trunk, roots, and branches, but on this particular day, we studied LEAVES.

Our day began with the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

In the book, the caterpillar feels much better after eating a nice green leaf.  MGT sent us giant green leaves with holes punched out, beads, and yarn to create a Make and Play caterpillar.  

After creating a rainbow caterpillar (because my girl is into rainbow everything... see her Rainbow Dinosaur Party), I asked her to create a caterpillar using our monthly pattern: ABB.  

She created the one below.

White, blue, blue. After much repetition, she decided on her own to change it up to dark blue, dark blue, green.  She really has been understanding pattern so much more deeply lately.

Although she did a beautiful job lacing and creating 2 different caterpillars, she chose to use the remnant yarn (that she referred to as "snake") to go through the holes in the giant leaf.

Besides the ABB pattern, my daughter really surprised me when we worked in her My Little Journal.  Since we were learning about leaves, I told her to go to the "L" page.

MGT suggested we draw a capital L in brown (like a branch) and then draw leaves on the letter L.

She drew on one side, and I did the other.  She knew exactly how to draw the letter L, but not sure about the leaves.  I demonstrated how to draw leaves and then told her to draw 5 on her letter L branch.

The most impressive part though was when we were done.  She labeled her side with her name and then labeled my side without asking how to spell "Momma!" I took the picture below while she was still writing the letter A in Momma.  I definitely did not want to forget this moment. 

In other news, Everett has learned to wave. He will be 11 months on November 1st.

He  also started crawling this month... and pulling up on all the things... and walking around them.

Where are my running shoes?  I think I am going to need them with him for sure!

Happy Learning, friends!

BOOK Bug Scavenger Hunt

We are spending time studying the orchard this month with our Mother Goose Time.

  These last few days we have studied all sorts of animals that visit the orchard including: raccoons, porcupines, birds, squirrels, and today we looked at bugs!

Our Mother Goose Time STEAM station had us going outdoors to complete a fun 

Bug Scavenger Hunt.  Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating (cold, wet, and rainy), 

and plan "B" needed to happen.  

"B" is for BOOKS.... a BOOK Bug Scavenger Hunt!

I love Usborne Books.  They have some amazing ones for preschoolers.  

I recently purchased the book My First Reference Book About Nature  ($9.99), which coincides perfectly with this Orchard Unit from MGT.   I printed out the Bug Scavenger Hunt page from the MGT Member Resources, pulled out our book, and asked my girl to flip through the pages and find what was on her scavenger hunt sheet.

Not only did she check off the boxes and color the bug, but I had her record what page number we found that particular insect on.  This helped her practice writing and recognizing her numbers. 

The first bug she found was the dragonfly pictured below:

We had a whole page dedicated to flowers and how bees help pollinate them.

We found a grasshopper, ant and fly as we learned about the six major animal groups. 

Then we came across a page completely devoted to Bugs and Insects! Perfect.  We found all the rest of the bugs for our scavenger hunt on this page.  

I love how she worked on writing her numbers and coloring in the lines, which is something she probably wouldn't have done if we went outside and did a bug hunt in our garden.

Sometimes adapting the lesson plan turns out to be just as fun as the initial one... or even better.

Happy Learning! 

Preschool STEAM Station: Pounding Colors

Last week we began our Orchard Harvest unit from Mother Goose Time, and it had an awesome 

STEAM Station involving flowers.  STEAM stations are learning stations that revolve around Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, or Math.  In this case, the STEAM station is focused mainly on Science, but I would also say Art. 

So last week, my 10 month old son decided he was not going to nap and after I took all the screaming I could handle, I decided the 3 of us were going to take a field trip and get some homeschooling done in the great outdoors (and hopefully wear him down for another nap).

We have a beautiful demonstration garden where we live.  Master gardeners take care of the space and it is for anyone to come out and enjoy. It was the perfect place to obtain a variety of flowers for our Steam Station. Unfortunately, I only shot the picture below which obviously doesn't show you the beauty of our garden...ugh.  I wish I had taken more pictures.  I wish I had more hands.
But I was enjoying just the moment with my kids and being completely present with them.

In the garden, we found a wide variety of flowers in all sorts of colors and we even came across a crab apple tree!  I love the texture of the crab apple... so interesting.   We tried to get one of each flower we found and placed in our basket to bring home for our experiment.  When we got home, and brother went down for another nap, Avaleigh and I headed to the garage to do our flower crushing.

 We placed the flowers on white paper towels, placed a layer of paper towels on top, and I taped the corners down to help.  We found one of Avaleigh's play hammers from a Melissa & Doug kit.  Then she got busy hammering away at the flowers.  It was so exciting to see the colors bleed onto the

 paper towels.  She really had to hammer hard and continuously to get a rich color.

We used white paper towels, but this would look great on some muslim or white fabric.  I just didn't have any on hand.  We did 2 different sets of the poundings.  The purple flowers and leaves were the richest in color, and it was so neat to see how much pigment was in such a small delicate flower.  Avaleigh's favorite flower was the one that looks like a spider in the 2nd picture below.

Can you even imagine that this is how they dyed yarns and fabrics a few centuries ago?
Can you imagine all the flowers and leaves it would take to make a purple robe?
Soooo many things we take for granted today that were such luxuries not that long ago.

My girl loved this experiment (along with myself) and I would have never thought to do something like this.  I am so grateful for our MGT curriculum.
I just wish I had done it on some fabric so I could frame it.  I might still frame it- the jury is still out on that.  I am so grateful that my boy napped for a little while so I could enjoy some mommy and me science with my girl.


What's one of your favorite flower experiments?


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