How long would you give your child to take a Chalkdust Geometry test?

[Michelle in MO]

My oldest has been using Chalkdust for geometry, and so far she's been doing well with the program and seems to be learning geometry.

She just finished Chapter 8 on Similarity and didn't seem to be having any trouble with the chapter so far. This morning she took the test and got only half of the problems finished in two hours! Granted, she said she "didn't feel very well" (meaning she's close to that time of the month). I can understand that; however, would this happen in a public school? There are 20 problems on the tests; so far she's been able to complete all 20 problems in about an hour and a half for the tests.

Should I allow her to work on the test tomorrow again? Should I make her re-do the chapter? Right now I'm frustrated and really don't know what to do about it.

[Hoggirl]

When things like this happen at our house (especially when all seems to have been going smoothly) I instantly go into panic mode! So, I would be stressed, too! I would just e-mail Prof. Mosely to get his take. I would include "generally" that she wasn't feeling well (the rest might be TMI for a male teacher LOL!) and that things have been good so far. It might just be that it is a particularly long test. He would know. Usually I can judge those things but not always. I would probably just let her finish it tomorrow and, as long as she did okay on it, just move on from there.
Not sure that I was helpful. :(

[Hilary in MI]

My ds1 is doing CD Geometry as well.

It sounds like it was a one-time thing and not a pattern, so she was probably just under the weather. I'd have her finish up tomorrow (or whenever she's better) and go on to Chapter 9 the day after.

BTW, I'm finding that with homeschooling the kids will start work even though they are under the weather, and not really tell me how they are feeling. Then, the day will fall apart, of course. They are more apt to try it out than if they had to go out to school, which is great but can lead to them trying to work when they really should be taking it easy.

Hey! It's great to hear that you all are around where we are in the book, too.

I hope that she is feeling better soon!

[Michelle in MO]

Dr. Moseley and see what he advises. I'm leaning towards having her re-listen to some of the lectures from this chapter and finish up the test tomorrow.

One of my perpetual frustrations with homeschooling is that I always feel I'm trying to "catch up" to one of the girls. Sometimes I have to spend so much time with the youngest that I neglect the other two. So---no, I don't do math with them every day---the older two tackle most of their lessons on their own. Then, if they run into problems, I'm panicking because I haven't been helping them all along, so I'm clueless as to how to help out in the middle of the book! How do women with more children possibly get everything done??? And yet, I feel constantly like I should be spending more time with them---and I do as much as I can. I'm always playing catch-up, though.

I just hope that listening to a few of the lectures for review will help her finish the test in decent time tomorrow.

I believe, too, with my three girls that, although they can work hard at times, there's still an element of "laziness" there to some degree. I think if they were in a school situation they would really understand better that they'd have to really study the night before a test if they were fuzzy on the material!