Portfolios, what to keep!

Figuring out what to keep in each child's folder can be a chore when you have so much evidence from the month. Mother Goose Time actually simplifies this by showing you the things you can put into the portfolios and the stickers that can be applied to explain what skills and domains that the evidence falls into. This is helpful for when you are holding parent-teacher conferences. 
The thing for home-providers, is that we do not have the room to keep 6-12 children's month of art work. It also can be quite overwhelming for parents to send so much home all at once at the end of the month. So, I will explain exactly what I send home and what I keep as evidence. 

Art Work- At the end of the month Mother Goose Time suggests that the children pick their own art work to save for that month. While this is a very good idea, I have usually already sent their art work home or it is hung up in the classroom. So what I do is I will have a piece that I hang up in the classroom that goes into the folder at the end of the month. I pick the art work for the walls with the intention of putting them in the folder. I pick art work that showcases the new skills and development of the children. 

 Photographs- I take pictures of skills that children are working on and have gained to go along with notes. Because the program I am running is tons of hands on activities. Mother Goose Time also has many activities that involve the children playing games and building. Because of this we needed to find a way to annotate what the children did and if they were progressing. 

What I consistently end up keeping every month is the name tags and the journals. The reason I keep those types of things is because it makes it easy to actually see the changes in their thought patterns, gross and fine motor skills. You have writing, math, reading, letter recognition, number recognition and free drawing located in name tags and journals. 
I know that some people do not like journals especially journals that have pictures and words inside of them, but I love the journals from Mother Goose Time. I do not use the suggestions at the front because I am using the journals as evidence. It CAN become bulky but the fact that the parents have something easy to look at and can easily see improvements from month to month without me having to show off my fancy education and vocabulary is the most important thing. Parents do not need fancy bells and whistles to understand if their children need extra help or if they are improving. They need a teacher who cares enough to sit down and explain how the work sent home can show the improvements in their child and can help explain what can be done at home to help the children advance forward in their education. Collecting the same type of work every month for the next year can be an accurate timeline in the progress being made by the child. 

Let me know what you use for assessments through out the year. 

Keep Teaching!
*I receive Mother Goose Time for an honest review*
Ms. Tessie 

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