The Crazy Earth Mama: Portfolios with Mother Goose Time

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Portfolios with Mother Goose Time

Our state requires us to keep a portfolio for each child that we teach in the home starting at age five (compulsory age for our state).
I like to start early. Why? Partly because I am a proud mama who wants to just keep everything their little hands touch.

I start keeping a portfolio and tracking the work our children do at such an early age because it helps to get in the habit and work out all the kinks before it's "mandatory."

I started a portfolio of sorts with my son when he was 2.5, long before we discovered Mother Goose Time. What does that first portfolio look like? It's kind of a mess and I missed a lot of great opportunities to save data that could have helped me in the future.

Mother Goose Time certainly makes things a lot easier in my opinion. We started with their preschool curriculum & a modified companion for toddlers this September. As I've mentioned before, we do receive Mother Goose Time for free in exchange for our opinions here on the blog.

Mother Goose Time's methods for keeping a child portfolio have simplified my life. I can definitively say that Ada Grace & Elly's portfolios are much more organized, sensible, and detailed than Noah's first portfolio back in 2014.

What do I save and where do I save it?

Mother Goose Time has a great "star system" in place that helps me determine what I really need to save. If I follow their system, I won't end up saving every scrap (a real problem for sentimental moms like me), but I'll have enough in 3 months to show work samples and photos from every goal covered in the complete curriculum.
Since our school year is about 9 months long, that means by the end of the "year," I will have amassed enough data & samples to present a comprehensive picture of where Ada Grace and Elly are at on their learning journey as well as where they excel or struggle.

At the end of a day, I upload any photos to a special file on my computer, store work samples in a folder labeled with the child's name, and make notes in my lesson planner about the activity outcomes. Then, at the end of the month, I transfer the weekly lesson planners, work samples, and photos (printed) to a larger "long-term" folder that we keep for the entire school year.

So far this month, we have samples from...