The Admin OS separates developmental assessments from weekly lesson planning:

• Use Learning > Assessments for skills, observations, checklists, reporting periods, and child reports. That is what this guide covers.

• Use Learning > This week for weekly classroom plans and parent sharing — see Lesson plans (for centers). A published plan reaches families only after someone presses Share on it, and Unshare hides it again. Sharing a plan does not email anyone.

Both areas require the staff member's corresponding permission. A missing menu item can be a role or classroom-scope issue rather than missing data.

What's on the Assessments tab

Everything in this guide lives on one page — Learning > Assessments. From the top down, it holds:

• Developmental progress — your skills library count, observations this month, draft reports, and reports shared with families, with Generate report alongside.

• Child checklist — review every developmental skill and record ratings for one child at a time.

• Mark a whole room — select one skill, choose the children, and record the room in a single pass.

• Assessment setup — your Skills library grouped by domain, your Reporting periods, and your Rating words.

• Reports — every report for the center, with its status.

The checklist routes are launched from this page; they are not separate top-level navigation items.

A child's own record also has a Learning section with a count and date for photos, behavior notes, observations, and assessment reports. Each line links into the matching library already filtered to that child. Open checklist there only needs Assessments access.

The other Learning tabs

How assessment setup works

Open Assessment setup and choose View setup. The summary line tells you where you stand — for example, 491 skills across 7 domains · Fall 26 is the current period.

Three things sit here: your Skills library on the left, your Reporting periods on the right, and your Rating words underneath.

Only a director or an admin can change the skills library, the periods, or the rating words. Other staff with Assessments access can still see them and rate children.

One skills library for your whole program

Your skills library is shared across your entire organization. There isn't a separate library per room — every classroom draws from the same list, and what each room actually sees is decided from that list rather than built separately.

Skills are organized into developmental domains: Approaches to Learning, Cognitive, Language & Literacy, Social-Emotional, Physical, Self-Help, and Creative. Some skills also have smaller sub-skills nested underneath them, which is why a domain can show more skills than you see at the top level.

Each skill in the list shows its description, whether it is Scored or Observe only, and who sees it — for example Every child · 36 months and up — with Edit and Archive alongside.

Set this up before the term starts. Teachers rate against whatever is active, so adding or archiving skills mid-term changes what their checklists show.

Adding or editing a skill

Use Add skill to create one, or Edit on any existing skill. The panel holds:

What this looks like is worth filling in. It appears to teachers as guidance on what they should be seeing, and a skill named without explanation gets rated inconsistently across a team.

Editing a skill is reversible — the panel's What happens (and how to undo) section explains how.

How Bloomily decides which skills a classroom sees

There's no step where you assign skills to a classroom. Two things decide it between them: the room's program, and the child's age.

The room's program picks the skill group. Every classroom runs a program, and that program decides which group of skills the room works from.

The child's age picks the skills within that group. A child sees a skill only while they are in its age range, so two children sitting in the same room can have different skills on their checklists.

When a child is younger or older than their room

If the room's program has an age range of its own, Bloomily keeps the age it uses for picking skills inside that range. For a program covering 36–48 months:

• a 30-month-old gets skills chosen at 36 months

• a 40-month-old gets skills chosen at 40 months

• a 52-month-old gets skills chosen at 48 months

This only changes which skills are offered. The child's date of birth and their age everywhere else in Bloomily are untouched.

The point of it is that a child who is young or old for their room stays with that room's group. A younger child does not pull a toddler skill set into a preschool room, and an older one keeps the room's skills rather than moving on.

If the program has no age range, Bloomily uses the child's real age to pick both their age group and their skills. A program that isn't age-based — Spanish, for instance — can add its own skills on top of that.

Some skills are shared across groups. Any age limits set on those skills still apply.

If a child moves rooms, their skills follow the new room's program and their own age. Nothing to update by hand.

Who sees this skill narrows it further. Left on Every child, the skill is center-wide. Pick a program instead (the list reads Only and the program's name, with its ages when it has them) and the skill appears only for children in that program's group — on their checklist, in their reports, and for their teachers.

The standard library already sets an age range on every skill it came with. Skills you add yourself default to every age, so set one if you don't want the skill showing up for infants and five-year-olds alike.

To change what a classroom sees, adjust the room's program, or the age range or program on the skill.

Choosing a different group for one child

A director or an administrator can change which group one child works from, without moving them to another room. On the child's record, the Learning section shows Goal set and where it came from — for example from room or from age.

Press Change, pick a program, and press Save goal set. To go back, pick Use the room's goal set.

Nothing is lost. Skills outside the chosen set are hidden on the checklist, not deleted, and past ratings and reports do not change. A program with no age range that the child's room runs, such as a language program, still adds its skills.

Reporting periods

A reporting period is a named date range — Fall 26, Spring 27, Summer 27. It defines the window a report covers and prefills its dates. Periods do not publish or share anything by themselves.

Periods are also shared across your whole organization. The current period is the one in use whose dates include today. It is what checklists open on and the period a new report starts on.

Use Add period to create one. Each period then offers Edit, Activate or Deactivate, and Delete.

Set up the whole year at once. Create every period you expect to use, with dates that do not overlap. A new period starts in use, and Bloomily moves on to the next one by itself when its dates arrive. It is far easier than doing it in a hurry at the start of each term.

Prefer to watch? Setting up your assessment periods:

Important: Keep period dates from overlapping

This is the setting that causes the most confusion, so it is worth being careful with.

Each period shows one status. Current is the period in use whose dates include today. Other periods in use show Upcoming or Ended, and a period you have switched off shows Not in use.

The current period drives everything by default — which observations the checklists show, what their counters add up to, and the dates a new report starts on. Teachers can still switch a checklist to another period in use, or to all dates.

• Deactivate takes a period out of use. It stops being offered on checklists and when you generate a report.

• Activate puts it back in use.

Keep the dates of periods in use from overlapping. If two of them both include today, the one that started most recently is current. If no period includes today, such as during a break, the checklists count observations from all dates. Because nothing looks broken, wrong dates can run for weeks before anyone notices.

Add a period before you generate reports. With no saved periods, there is nothing to prefill a report's date range, and Generate report offers standard school-year and season dates that may not match your reporting schedule.

Be careful with Delete. Deactivating takes a period out of use and keeps it; deleting removes it. If you only want to stop using a period, deactivate it.

Recording observations and ratings

Most rating happens in the staff app and the staff portal, but you can record from here too.

One child at a time

Search for a child in the Child checklist card and choose Open checklist. You get the skills that apply to that child, grouped into learning areas, each showing how many are rated.

Press a rating on a skill to save it, or Not applicable when the skill does not apply to this child. Use Add comments inside a learning area to write about that area, and Overall comments at the bottom for the child as a whole. Notes and photos teachers add with a rating in the staff app show under the skill.

Each skill keeps its evidence. Under a rated skill, a line such as 3 observations this term opens the trail: every rating this term, newest first, each with its date, the rating, any note, and the activity it came from.

The activity name is there when a teacher rated the skill from an activity. On the iPad, saving an activity tagged with learning goals offers Add learning evidence, where the teacher can rate each child on those goals. Taking part never changes a rating by itself. Every line is a rating a teacher chose, a child they left blank gets nothing, and no family is told.

A whole room at once

Pick a classroom in Mark a whole room and choose Open classroom. Select one skill, choose which children it applies to, and record them together.

Every child is selected by default. Deselect anyone the rating does not apply to before you press a rating — pressing one saves it for every selected child.

A skill you pick here will not necessarily apply to every child in the room, since their ages differ within the room's range. Read the selection rather than accepting it.

The four ratings

These are the standard words, and they are the same wherever a rating is recorded — the admin checklist, the staff portal, and the staff app. A director or an admin can rename them under Rating words in Assessment setup, so every checklist shows your school's words. The same card can switch off a level your school does not use, as long as two stay on. Every skill can also be marked Not applicable, which is never counted.

Generating a report

Use Generate report to create a report for one child from what has already been recorded. Choose a classroom to narrow the list, then the child and the reporting period — it starts on the current period.

A generated report is a draft. Nothing reaches a family until it is shared with them.

A report moves through four states: Draft, In review, Final — not shared, and Shared with family. Making a report final and sharing it with the family are separate things, and a report can sit finished but internal for as long as you want.

• Publish and share makes a report final. Under Who can read it?, choose the family as soon as you publish, or only the school for now. The button then reads Publish and share or Publish without sharing.

• Share with family makes a final report that was not shared visible to guardians in the parent portal. Stop sharing hides it again.

• Unpublish returns a report to draft and hides it from the family.

Check that the report shows Shared with family before telling a family they can see it.

For the review queue, sending reports back to teachers, publishing and sharing, and publishing several at once, see Reviewing and publishing assessment reports (for centers).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can parents see assessment data in real-time? No. Draft reports and in-progress observations stay internal. A report reaches a family only once it is shared with them.

Q: How many assessment periods should we have? Most centers use 2-4 periods per year (Fall, Winter, Spring, or quarterly). Choose what works with your curriculum and reporting schedule.

Q: Can different classrooms use different skill sets? Yes, but not by assigning them room by room. The library is organization-wide. The room's program decides which group of skills it works from, and a skill's age range and its Who sees this skill setting decide where it appears within that. Change those rather than looking for a per-classroom setting.

Q: Why do two classrooms show different numbers of skills? Because the rooms are running different programs, and because the children in them are different ages. The program sets the skill group; each child's age decides which of those skills they see.

Q: We have a child who is young for their room. Will they see younger children's skills? No. If the room's program has an age range, Bloomily keeps the age it uses for picking skills inside that range — a 30-month-old in a 36–48 month program gets skills chosen at 36 months, and a 52-month-old gets skills chosen at 48 months. Both stay with the room's group. It does not change the child's date of birth or their age anywhere else.

Q: Why do two children in the same room have different skills on their checklists? Their ages differ within the room's range, and age picks the skills inside the program's group. Skills limited to a group under Who sees this skill can narrow it further.

Q: Why do some lines in a skill's trail have no activity? Only ratings added from an activity name one. A rating pressed on a checklist has none, and neither does anything recorded before activities could carry evidence.

Q: Does logging an activity with learning goals change a child's rating? Not on its own. A rating changes only when a teacher picks one, on the checklist or in Add learning evidence.

Q: I added a skill and it's showing up everywhere. Skills you add yourself default to every age. Edit the skill and set an age range.

Q: Why does the family's copy of a report list fewer skills than the checklist? Families see the main skills only. The checklist, and the report you review in Bloomily, also include the smaller skills under each main skill, so their totals are higher. Both can be right about the same child.

Related

• Start here: assessments for directors — the order to work through everything

• Reviewing and publishing assessment reports (for centers) — the review queue, sending back, and bulk publishing

• Assessments in the staff portal — what your teachers see at their end

• Lesson plans (for centers) — weekly classroom plans, approval, and parent sharing