Missionary Games

I overheard my girls playing today with the Legos and cars that are always piled on our "train" table. I was reading some things at my desk, so it only gradually dawned on me what they were playing. They were pretending to be missionaries (or pretending that their cars were missionaries, I'm not sure). My oldest was saying something about "but no one here is a Christian" while my youngest was trying to tell everyone (or every car and Lego man) about Jesus.

It made me smile, that's for sure! Whether it's due to the GAs and Mission Friends classes at church, or the missionary biography stories we've been reading for school (mostly from Hero Tales), or a combination of everything, missionary work is on their minds. I had just been telling my oldest, at her bedtime last night, about an article I had recently read. It told of a missionary to a small village in a remote area, where not only was no one a Christian, but they were overtly hostile toward Christians. But thanks to months of prayer, and God's miraculous healing power, a church was born there, with 35 or more new Christians. They began to make a huge difference in the village, where drunkenness and spirit (demon) worship had been common.

I have really ended up liking the stories in Hero Tales, which was suggested by Sonlight, in an older version of Core A. They are amazing stories, and make me quite emotional sometimes, which makes them hard to finish reading aloud. I wasn't sure how much my oldest was getting out of them, but I guess she really is listening.

I like the title of the book too - Hero Tales. Missionaries really are the type of heroes I want my children to admire, and perhaps emulate. How hard it is in our culture to imagine giving up the little luxuries that we take for granted (or even big ones, like running water), to live in another culture, with little income, with no thought for career advancement (at least here on Earth). How rare it is for someone to aim for such a life, instead of a career as a lawyer, engineer, computer specialist, scientist, doctor, athlete, etc., with the accompanying big house, 2+ cars, etc. (And how many parents truly want that for their child? Do I, really, when I really think about it? I'm reminded of the verse where Jesus said it was harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.) How hard it is to go through with such a life, instead of just thinking that being a missionary would be "neat." Perhaps the drive to become a missionary starts now, in childhood, and with continued exposure to the real-life miracles that those who are fully committed to Christ may see every day. Perhaps such an emphasis might even change the parent....

Music Co-op

I went to an informational meeting tonight for a new music co-op that is starting up in our area. There is another music co-op about 45 minutes away from us that I have been contemplating for over a year now, ever since we started homeschooling. Music is such an important part of my life that finding some sort of music group for my kids to join has been near the top of my to-do list. (Music really needs to be done in a group setting, at least for some of the time.) But this other co-op would be quite a drive for every Friday, 45 minutes each way (especially starting at 8:30 in the morning). Plus, my younger kids were really too young still to do much besides stay in the nursery. So we didn't join this past year.

Then, just this past month, I got a surprise email announcing this new music co-op! (I actually mentioned it a couple posts ago too.) Right down the road from us! Maybe 10-15 minutes away. It is an offshoot of the first music co-op, as many more people were interested in the co-op, but just weren't willing to make the drive. I was so happy! This really just seems perfect for us. They plan to offer choir, band (and recorder and rhythm band for younger ones), music theory, sectionals (like for woodwinds, brass, etc. - once the kids get old enough to pick an instrument), plus other stuff in the afternoons, like drama. From the meeting tonight, it sounds like we will have plenty of interest, and a good number of qualified teachers. This is a co-op, so the parents do the teaching (and other jobs, wherever their abilities are a good fit), which makes the cost considerably less than a group where you just drop off your kids.

I have not been too interested in other co-ops, as I don't really want to teach, and I usually don't like at least some of the curriculum choices of most co-ops. I know it would be good for my kids to be in a class with other kids, at least some of the time, for social opportunities as well as for learning how to participate in a classroom setting (and to spend some time away from Mom!). But I really didn't want to sign up for any of the "core" educational co-ops available locally. If I were going to "out-source" any academic classes, I'd choose to send them to a University-Model school or a class here or there, where I could drop them off and go run errands myself.

But a music co-op - that's something different! No problems with curriculum I don't like. And it sounds like my contribution to the co-op will be playing the piano for the older choir, maybe organizing the music library, and maybe teaching a theory class. I wouldn't mind playing the piano for various groups all day, if they'd let me! What a perfect fit! It will be a big chunk of time, of course - all morning every Friday (we don't plan to do the afternoon classes). But I think with our curriculum choices for next year, that won't be a problem, especially while my kids are all still so young (and don't have heavy course loads).

Now, I only hope that my kids will all love it as much as I know I will!

Test Results

I really need to get back to posting more often. I got out of the habit, and now I tend to just not think about it. Even though I have plenty of things I could write about!

So, to start with tonight, I'll update you on my 1st grader's standardized test experience. We did the test over 3 days, doing 2-3 sections a day. It really didn't take too long, and my daughter ended up enjoying it too. She wants to do it again now! I made sure she knew that some of the questions were meant to be too hard for her to answer, and that it was mostly just for fun, for us to see how much ahead of 1st grade work she really was, and how much she had learned. It was interesting to me, too, to see what kinds of questions they asked, since that gave me an idea of what "standard" 1st grade students were supposed to know. The social studies and science questions were particularly interesting, since those topics are more random really, than the basics of math and reading. I knew that we hadn't covered exactly the same things as were on the test, so I wasn't worried about her scores in those areas. I know that we will get to everything in time, whether or not we do it in the same order as public schools.

The main area of interest to me, as far as her score goes, was reading. That is really the biggest thing for 1st grade, and Rebekah did excellent - better than I expected. The test placed her at a 2.8 grade level, which is the 8th month of 2nd grade (and the 90th percentile). Her vocabulary and listening scores were also extremely good. Her spelling, on the other hand.... Well, I already knew spelling was one of her weaker areas. We'll be trying a different approach for 2nd grade.

Her math was not as good as I'd like either, but it was obvious that her main difficulty was memorizing her basic addition facts. I have not pushed her with flash card drills nearly enough, since she protests them so much, and she didn't get enough fact review with her math curriculum this past year. Again, this is an area we'll be doing differently for 2nd grade.

For science, she did not score very high, and that bugs me a bit, since science is the one subject I like the best, but I know it's just because we covered different topics than were on the test. She left too many blank on those questions - not wrong answers, just unknown to her. Then for social studies, surprisingly, she scored the best of all the subjects, coming in with a grade equivalent of 3.2, and ranking at the 94th percentile.

So, overall, combining all the subjects, she ranked comfortably above average, with a grade equivalent of 2.1. Considering that she still had almost 2 months left of 1st grade material to cover when we took the test, I'm pleased with that!