Looking for some free assessment resources? I’ve been hunting all over the internet and I’ve found some great ones! I can’t wait to share them with you because I know they will help you figure out what you need to teach your children. And if I’ve learned anything as a mom it’s that you have to have a plan when it comes to kids!
I have a plan to help me survive summer. I will have three kids – three boys; three mobile, adventurous, curious and energetic boys – under my supervision for eight solid weeks. That’s 1,344 hours. I can hope they will be asleep for half of those, but I won’t hold my breath for that. Like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared.
In trying to put things together for this summer, I realized that I don’t have as comprehensive a grasp on what my kids can do as I once did. I needed to do some assessments so I could plan things that are appropriate for my kids. Spring Break was my window and I took it.
I used resources dealing with k-2nd grade and preschool. There were lots. But these are the best ones I found. And they are free. You gotta love free!
HOMESCHOOL/SUMMER SCHOOL ASSESSMENT RESOURCES
THREE AMAZING ASSESSMENT RESOURCES FOR PRESCHOOL
In no specific order, here are three of my seven favorite resources for the assessments I did on my boys:
This Pre-K workbook that Lindsay at One Beautiful Home put together was a perfect place to start with Little J. He has such a different learning style than Big J and I really wasn’t sure what he could and couldn’t do. This was basic, but still had more complex activities and concepts in it too. It was the perfect place to start without overwhelming me. And it was fun!
Pre-Kinders has some great pages to help with assessments as well. I used these pages to make games that would be fun for Little J but still tell me what I needed to know. For example, I cut the number tiles apart (pictured on the right side of the photo above) and then gathered his cars. We made “parking lots” and then he counted how many cars were in the parking lot and put the number tile next to the lot. It let me know if/how high he could count, as well as working on numbers as a quantity and not just a symbol.
The next four assessments are great to help your child prepare to enter kindergarten. Don’t miss the self-evaluation page! It is super helpful in getting an idea of how your kids think they are doing. It helped soo much!
FOUR ASSESSMENT RESOURCES TO HELP PREPARE YOUR CHILD FOR KINDERGARTEN
This Reading Mama has some fun pages on colors. I didn’t use quite as much of this one as I’d hoped when it became pretty clear that Little J has his colors down pretty well. If your little one is just starting on colors, this would be a really good packet to use. The number and letter pages came in handy and I plan to continue to use them this summer. She has some other Pre-K packs that I plan to use this summer too!
I actually used the assessment pages from The Polka Dot Patch on both boys, separately. The top 5 boxes I used as a tracking page with Little J. With Big J, I used the entire page to practice reading, numbers and days of the week/months of the year. We also talked about seasons and what happens in each one. There’s also a reading assessment available.
If you want to track progress over the summer, I like this set up. It has all assessments for the year in one place. I did assessments over Spring Break, I plan to do a quick one at the beginning of our summer school and then again eight weeks later, at the end. If I decide to do summer school again (of eventually venture into homeschooling full time), I can refer back to how I taught certain things, what worked and what didn’t as well as seeing if I spent an entire summer making any difference in my children’s education. Visual gratification can be helpful in providing future motivation… it can also remind me if it turns out to be a total mess and I get future grand ideas.
This first grade assessment packet from School is a Happy Place is gigantic and absolutely AMAZING! I used this one with Big J and it was so perfect. It was very comprehensive and I feel like I have a great handle on what he can do. The kid likes to do worksheet pages and so it wasn’t terribly hard to get him to work on it. We’re at the end of Kindergarten, so there were some things Big J didn’t know – and that’s EXACTLY what I wanted to know. This would also be an excellent tracking resource and is what I plan to use with Big J this summer.
I have a similar page that we use in our preschool. It’s also a great reminder to Big J and gives him a chance to think about how he’s behaving. Big J does great with self-evaluations and it really helps his behavior when he takes a moment to think about what he is doing. There is also a page with school subjects listed and the kids can do a self-evaluation on their progress in those subjects.
Do you do any schooling at home? If you have a favorite resource, let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for more ideas!
We are homeschooling the younger three of our five children and this is exactly what I have been looking for, so thank you! Since I don’t use a boxed curriculum but, rather, have designed my own, and since we try to work on the areas that come easily first and take the harder stuff very slowly, our 5 year old and 2.5 year old both seem to fit outside of the box in terms of what “grade” they’re in. I’d like to know exactly what gaps we need to fill so we can determine our starting point for next year since I would like to switch to a boxed curriculum at that time. I’ve been looking and…do you know how hard it is to find assessments beyond Kindergarten readiness checklists?! Anyway, thank you. 🙂
You are very welcome! I am so glad they were helpful! I spent a lot of time looking for them so I know what you mean when you say it’s hard to find good assessments. They were super helpful when I was trying to determine where my boys were and what we should focus on. Good luck and enjoy all that learning! =) Thanks for stopping by!