Weekend Edition~Testing and exams?

Do homeschoolers need to tests or use exams? If not, how would they know what the child is learning?

The simple answer is, no. As a homeschooler you do not have to test or exam your children. Now some states do require some at certain times, and then of course you must obey your state laws. But, in general you do not need tests or exams.

How do you know what they are learning? Because you are with your children all the time. In a classroom sitting a teacher is having to teach 30 or more children. She does not have the time to have a deep personal relationship over years (life time!) with each child to know what they know or do not know. As a parent you know your child. You are with them every day, you know what they can and can not do. You didn't have to make them take a test, to make sure they were walking, or talking. You seen it with your own eyes. It's the same with math, language, science etc. You are with them every day. And when you engage your children they LOVE to talk about all the things they know. haha And you will just know. When you are at a store they can start to tell you about budgets, how much money they have, and what they can buy with it, or what they would have to save for. When you go to a zoo, they will be more then happy to tell you all they know about each animal and habitat, and every thing they know about zoology on a whole! When you go to a gardening store to start buying your spring plants, they will tell you about bugs that eat plants, and about the plants they know about. This just happens naturally because children love to share and tell you about the things they know.

So in short, no you don't have to test a child you are homeschooling. With exception of some states requirements. But, not all states require testing. My state does not. And you will know what they are learning, by being with them and knowing them personally. Remember you do not have to have any resemblance or keeping up with public schools. And most likely you will not want to. As most homeschool children are way ahead of public schools. So you wouldn't want to hold them back like that any way.

But, how will I know when to promote them in grades? As you continue on your homeschool journey eventually you will realize grade levels are arbitrary. They really do not have much meaning outside of institutionalized schooling. They are a way to group a lot of children together to make it easier to educate the masses. You are not educating the masses. You are only educating your children. So there's no reason to split them up into grade levels. It is natural that most children will not have all subject knowledge at the same grade level either. That is why public schools, often have reading lab, or math lab, as well as intermediate reading classes and math classes. Because some children are ahead and some children are behind. And that's normal because they aren't robots. What to remember is, again get out of the box thinking that all children need to be at X or something is wrong. We all learn at different stages in life, different things and that's ok. The main agenda should be to master skills, and keep on building and learning on them. And just by living life that will be accomplished. It's near impossible to stunt learning because no matter what we are doing, we are learning something from it.