Tot School- ABC assessment

With us wrapping up our Tot School and preparing to shift to preschool this fall, I wanted to find out how many and which letters Little Guy could identify.  The thought of sitting him down and drilling him on what he knows is definitely not an option (doesn't sound fun for me or him), so I wanted to do it in a way that incorporates fun and things that we would be doing anyway.

Supplies Needed:

• I printed off the Tot School assessment form from 1+1+1=1.  (Any list of the alphabet would work.)
• Magnetic Letters
• Playdough
• Metal cookie sheet (letters written on the sheet are optional)

 What we did:

• Little Guy sat an his picnic table, where he always does his work.  
• I sat across from him, placing my clipboard with the assessment form on the bench, so he would not see that I was writing.  (My goal was to prevent him from focusing on what I was writing, so he could focus on the letters.)  
• We got out the playdough with letters already mixed in and the cookie sheet.  
• As Little Guy would pull out a letter, I would ask him what it was.  Then I would put it on the cookie sheet in the correct spot.  (He could have put it on himself, but this made it more fun for him that mommy was doing some of the work.)  
• As he pulled out the next letter, I could write his response on my clipboard. 

Things I wrote down:

• If he named a letter correctly, I wrote a check mark.
• If he named a letter incorrectly, I wrote the incorrect name and if he then gave the correct name (for example, Little Guy confuses K and X.  When he found the X, he first said "K" and after prompting "X." I wrote down- next to the X- "K, check mark."
• If he gave a word that starts with that letter.

This was a fun way for me to see what Little Guy knows and find things to continue to work on.

How do you find out what your toddler knows?