Day #1 of Exam week for Term 1

Just to share, or chronicle or for whatever reason, here’s how our first day of exam week is going. This is for Term 1 of Y9 and Y7Lite using Ambleside Online’s free curriculum. They’ve recently (within the last day or two!) gotten exams put together for the specific curriculum. Before there were general exam questions and suggestions for us to create our own. I have made a couple of our own and don’t think they were too bad. I’m very grateful for the ones put together by AO.

So I woke up at 6:30 am and fed the cat. Very important. Then I made sure that the exams were together and put on the kids’ desks. I made scones for the kids (and myself of course) with chocolate chunks. And coffee –chocolate raspberry…for whoever wanted some.

I woke the kids about 7:30 am. It took awhile for them to actually get up. Breakfast was consumed by 8:15 am. They then focused on their Pokeman obsession. Bleh. Looking at books and lists they’ve made.

I took a shower about 8:45 am and school started at 9-ish am. The exams cover 3 pages (2 full, 1 is 1/2 or less) with 15 subject areas. Fox, Y7Lite, wanted to do a page a day, since our ‘week’ is only 3 days due to Thanksgiving on Thursday. He chose to start with the last page that has all of 4 things on it. Not going to fly. He was made to choose more to work on. He chose to do his US blank map next, followed by some math. Lee, Y9, has done 5 subjects today and chose to break it up equally for the three day ‘week’.

Both have some things that they have to turn in, and I’ve set aside a two-pocket folder for that.

In between questions, Fox did some chores. Lee chose to complete her work for the day and then do the chores.

I looked over all the questions (and even came up with some of my own) before giving them the exams so I know that they know something about what I’m asking. It’s quite…interesting what those ‘somethings’ are. Neither are doing very well with Latin –both will have to refer to their Latin textbooks. Fox isn’t recalling the process for three of the math questions.

It’s often at times like this that I wonder if we’ve (rather *I*) not done enough during our school day. There are days that we skimp or simply let it all slide but when we do school (you know, the ‘right’ way lol) it goes quite well and I feel much is being learned.

I was quite impressed with both of their US maps –much more complete and accurate than last year (at the end of May of this year). Also, their writing has much improved. It is nice to read their memories of what they’ve learned. And their vocabulary has definitely been expanded –the wording of some of Fox’s answers just, well, I’ll just say they make me smile. I might be sharing their answers next week. I’ll have to get permission first from them.

It’s 12:30 pm and exams are done for the day. I’ve made lunch and chores have been done. Now the kids can have ‘free’ time (aka: screen time) before we head out for Lee’s babysitting job.