It's almost here, It's almost here!!

So this is the part of the year is when I began to panic a little bit! In a couple of weeks, we will be taking our end of the year testing (which in NC is required by law). Now my oldest is not a test taker by any means but my youngest doesn't seem to mind, well for most of the time anyways. I am  personally,a middle of the road mama on the subject of end of the year testing. I would probably have the boys tested on a yearly basis even if it wasn't required of us by state law. If for anything else, just to see how we were doing from year to year ( I like being able to see that yes we still have to work on spelling or that we did AWESOME in math!) and for later for my oldest's high school transcripts if they are needed.

I have had a couple people ask me this year, do you do anything special before your testing?? Those first couple of years I said, "No, I don't teach for a test, like in the public schools do". Now I still don't teach for these tests but I do use end of the year guidelines like in workbook for such and such grade, you know basically like those books "What your ?? needs to know" just so I make sure that we have the basics down. I also have started doing some vocabulary in subjects like math, science and history so that the boys will have a wide range of words in their vocabulary. I usually do some kind of search on google for what I am looking for, for my oldest I did a search the other day for 8th grade math vocabulary and came up with a vary of sites online! For my youngest, I did a search for 3rd grade science vocabulary, just so we could see if there was any of those words that he didn't know that meaning of;)

All in all, it is a personal choice on what testing you like to use if any!! I personally like the Woodcock-Johnson test, because it seems to be a good fit for my boys. They are allowed to take the test as far as they can so we can see their strengths and weaknesses! Now if only they had video game level design questions or even basic animal facts my boys would score off the chart! This test has a fee associated with it, due to the fact that only certified testers are allowed to administrator it. While other tests are free and have little requirements for giving those tests at home. I like having this one thing that someone else does, so that I can sit back and relax for a couple of hours;)