“Whole Child” Developmental Evaluations for Preschool Students

Every once in a while  parents express concern that their child is not coming home from Morningside School with more evidence of academic work,  i.e. worksheets.  Truly, when I am approached about this, it is almost always because parents are wondering how their children are “progressing” in preschool.   I love that these parents are interested in their child’s development!  I want to assure you, we are working daily on a wide variety of  learning objectives.   Letter and number identification, phonemic awareness, counting, colors, shapes, patterns, sequencing and passage of time have a high priority in our preschool classroom (and play yard)  but much of the work product is ephemeral in nature.  Learning takes place in one to one conversations between teachers and students.  It takes place  in shaving cream and paint, in the process of constructing, tinkering, discovering and problem solving in a social context.  The concrete results of the work and play are evidenced by things like, a desire to understand things more fully, fine motor coordination that makes it easy to learn to write when it’s time, and an excitement for learning to read.

This year we are reworking our evaluation tools to incorporate “whole child” developmental goals and objectives.  This evaluation will be administered by USU Senior Practicum Students and Morningside School teachers twice each academic year.

The kindergarten program has been evaluating students throughout the year and are unaffected by the changes in our preschool curriculum.   In fall, due to the many transitional issues, we did not evaluate the incoming preschoolers, but we will complete an evaluation of  each preschool student before the end of the academic year. We always welcome parent visits to discuss questions or concerns at any time.

This morning I was gearing up to write a blog post about play-based learning when I found Imagination Soup had posted this guest blog written by Amy Webb, Ph.D., (Human Development and Family Sciences) and author of thoughtfulparent.com.  I am including this link for those of you who are curious about why we do the things the way we do at Morningside School.  Enjoy!