What is My Child's Reading Level?

Since my oldest son requires a steady stream of books from the library for independent reading, I wondered what his reading level was and how I could use that information to see if the books I'm picking out for him are challenging enough. That seemed like a simple enough task, but it turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected. 

First of all, reading assessment test results can vary... by quite a bit. School's tests are no exception. Your child may test as reading at a 4th grade level locally, a 5th grade level in the next county, and a 3rd grade level in the next state. Test results can also vary from year to year, as standards fluctuate. So I've decided there is no such thing as a "fourth grade reading level." I still wanted to get a ballpark idea, and then ask my librarian what to do with it, so we took some free online reading tests. I'll share the links here in case you're interested...

Free Online Reading Tests

Our New Workboxes Made With 12x12 Sterilite Drawers

After having an adorable workbox system for Kindergarten and First Grade, this year I changed it up a bit. The drawers weren't quite big enough to hold all of our stuff, and I've tweaked how we use them as well. Now we use Sterilite drawers, which I can stack for multiple kids. Here they are:

Never Ever Ever Bind Anything at Staples!!!!!

I managed to complete the most wonderful, annoying project this month! It's wonderful because I love it, it was annoying because "professionals" were involved who botched it up so it was a headache to get it finished properly.

I sorted and organized all of our keepsake school papers so I could bind them into books, one book per school year per kid. Nice idea right? Well, it would have been if Staples wasn't involved. I prefer to do my own binding with the Pro-Click, but unfortunately spines are only available up to 5/8" (110 page capacity). I needed about a 2" spine, so I had to have Staples do it for me. Sadly for me they did exactly what I feared, which was to botch my order! They mis-cut pages, had a few of them hanging outside the spine and even left a page out of the middle of my book! Check out their "professional" binding job...

(the pages aren't even IN the binding!)

They also used spines that were entirely too small...