Testing

We decided to do standardized testing again this year. We like to do testing because it's a chance to practice how to take a test, it's a chance to see if we have any huge gaps and then decide whether or not we care about them, and, who knows, maybe something on the test will spark a new interest in a new subject.

I had sort of mentally planned this for the first part of June. But the tests arrived over the weekend and the kids wanted to move up the testing to the end of May. Okay. But then they saw me looking over the material to see what all it was going to involve (how long it would take, could they do it at the same time, etc. etc.), and they decided to start TODAY.

They CAN do the tests at the same time -- they happen to be on 2 levels that have the same time frames for the various sections. So we sit at the kitchen table, I read the directions for the section, I say how long they'll have, Annabeth goes into a meltdown because she's panicked that she'll never get it done in time (I was sympathetic the first couple of times, but it's getting old), I start the stopwatch, they start, Thalia starts laughing at some of the questions, Annabeth gets annoyed at her for making noise, Annabeth finishes in about half the time alloted or less (which is why the panicking is getting old -- you'd think she'd figure out that she has ample time), they beg me to stop the timer because they're both already done and don't feel like sitting there for several more minutes waiting (I'm trying to give them the true testing experience, you know). Repeat.

The directions from the testing company and from the company from which we got the tests are pretty good -- fairly complete in covering various situations. They don't mention how to handle large cats deciding to participate






so we had to just figure that out for ourselves. Hope that doesn't violate some testing rule. To my knowledge he didn't whisper any answers to her.