Assessing a Child's Reading Level

We're making arrangements for Maggie to be evaluated by the public school.  It's one of those things we never wanted to do, but we suspect that we're going to have a hard time accessing services from the county and the state if she has not ever been in The Government System, proving her need for assistance and accommodations.

Before she goes in for their evaluation, however, I want to have a sense of where she stands on their scale.  As a homeschool teacher, I know my students.  It doesn't matter how they compare to others, ahead or behind.  It doesn't matter what grade level they're at.  I'm not going to learn any useful information from a standardized test.  By simple observation and knowing my students/kiddoes, I have what I need to help them continue to learn.

However, that's not how the school views things.  They want grade levels.  They want test scores.  They want percentiles.  They want to compare children and line up a pecking order organize them into skills-groups. 

So how does one determine a kid's reading level?  I have a sense of what Maggie can read easily, what she can struggle through, and what's too hard.  When I hunted for online reading tests, they were stupid.  They had lists of words for kids to read.  That's not a reliable way to test reading!  So I'm having her read to me some chapters of books with an assigned grade level.  If she can read it correctly and understand what's going on in the story, that tells more way more than having her rattle off a list of unrelated (and increasingly difficult) words.

But how do I know whether Little House on the Prairie is a 3rd-grade book or a 7th-grade book?  Guess what?  I found the Scholastic website.  You can type in the name of a book.  If Scholastic carries it, you'll find both the reading level and the interest level.  (By the way, Laura's story is rated as grade 4.3.  I'm skeptical about the interest level, though.  The website says 3rd grade.  I say my 3-yr-old granddaughter likes it, my 8-yr-olds liked it, my teenagers liked it, and I still like it!)   Another graded list is available from a Massachusetts school.  This one can be sorted by reading level, by title, or by author.

So far, it looks like my guess of Maggie's reading level is likely to pan out according to this in-depth test.  I wonder if the school's test will be as realistic.

Installation Pictures

Pastor Suelflow was the installer.

President Suelflow, Pastor, Deacon, and Gary.

The ones Gary confirmed. All but one of my kids were there that day, and Bethany. (Some of you will remember when "and Bethany" used to be her name? LOL.)

Gary and me.




Some pictures have been posted to church's website.  Thanks to Mike and Laura!  (Their camera takes much better pictures than mine, so I didn't even bother pulling my camera out of my purse that day.)

The Burden of Raising a Handicapped Child

Go read Scott's reflections on being the dad of a kid with Down Syndrome!

And then,

don't be a burden.

Again Given Us Grace to Receive This Sacrament

Surely you couldn't take things for granted as much as I do.  Surely not.

The post-communion prayer we've used recently speaks of "grace to receive the holy body and precious blood" of Jesus.

Think about that.  Grace to receive.  Think about how many different things that means.

There are grape vines growing, wheat growing, and people who can make that produce into wine and bread.  The weather has been good enough.  There are people who tend the vines, people who drive the combines, and people who have the skill to turn grapes into wine without letting it become vinegary.  It's all by God's grace.

We have cars and gasoline.  We have a ride to church so that we can receive Christ's body.  That ride (or our ability to walk to church) is a gift of God's grace.

Our church building is still there.  It hasn't been blown away in a tornado, burned in a fire, or been bombed by terrorists.  Those things happen to Christian churches sometimes.  But as we are in church, praying this post-communion collect, we still have that physical place.  And a pastor.  That's only by God's grace.

The liturgy has been preserved to us.  The preaching of the Gospel continues to go forth.  That's not anything we can pat ourselves on the back for.  That's due to God's grace.

Attacks on Christian freedom notwithstanding, we are still free to assemble weekly or daily for preaching and prayers and the Sacraments.  There's no suspicion that when we pull around the corner into the church driveway, we'll find armed guards there, rounding us up for prison, torture, or execution.  That's due to God's grace.

For those of us who are in churches where the Lord's Supper is celebrated at least once a week, we rejoice in the frequency of this gift.  There are churches, even among us, where the Sacrament is offered only once or twice a month.  There are churches in other denominations where it is offered a few times a year.  But for us, Sunday after Sunday, the Lord has been gracious to give us Himself to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of our sins.

But more than anything else, He has graciously preserved us in the faith.  That's not something I do.  It's not something you do.  And it's certainly not chance.  We still believe in Him; we still desire Him; we still long to come to the Supper.  That too is a miracle of God's grace.

The Best Thing I've Ever Read on Depression

Well, maybe not the absolute best thing.  But really really good.

The author of the article recognizes that life is not a bed of roses, and we do not deserve perpetual happiness.  Anyone who's looking for that, any doctor who is trying to help his patients achieve that, lacks understanding about the theology of the cross.  That does not, however, mean that drugs (aka medications) ought never be used to treat depression.

Pastor Esget referred to the article and had a few other good things to say himself.

Sainthood

Saints.  "Forgiven sinners."

Contrary to what is taught in some parts of Christendom, saints are not the super-holy ones whose virtue and good works make them better than the rest of us.

In class last night, Pastor pointed out that, in Paul's epistles, he would refer to a whole congregation as "saints" or "holy ones."  If an entire congregation (even in Corinth!) could be called "saints" then there's something wrong with the typical definition of the word.

Attachment Parenting

There was no such term when my kids were little.

But it explains what I did.  And it also explains why I was so different from other friends with whom I shared so much in common.  At the time, I didn't know how to explain it.  Sometimes I would say, "But I like my kids."  However, that implied other people didn't, and that's not true. 

We rarely got babysitters.  I missed the kids when they went to visit Grandma.  I nursed "too long."  I often kept the baby in bed with us overnight.  I had a sling to carry the babies, but more commonly carried them in my arms without the sling.  We homeschooled, so they didn't have to "face reality."   We were told repeatedly that the apron strings were too tight, that the kids would never grow up, that we were training them to become dependent upon us, that they would never able to function without mommy and daddy helping them.

HA!  Look at 'em now, all grown up.   Definitely not dependent.

Rachel told me the other day that I was a "hippie mother."  I want to ask if hippies come in a conservative variety.  And yet, I did wear the Birkenstocks.

Ides of March Party

The Latin teacher at our school decided to have a party last week for the Ides of March.  Nearly the whole day was spent with ancient Roman customs, Latin practice ("Simon Says" in Latin, anyone?), Roman clothing, Roman food, a pottery demonstration, and more.

Along with the kids in the school, she invited Maggie and another homeschooler (both of whom are in the back center of the group here).  What a blessing for us!

Kitties During the Night

All winter: no screens on the windows.
Sleeping with the bedroom door shut, and kitties on the outside.
During the night, we slept.
Novel concept.

Warm weather; screens in; windows open.
Kitty-claws ripping the screen to wake us. 
"Let me in, let me in, I want a couple of bites of kibble!"
Kitty gets the idea that she can have whatever she wants during those nocturnal hours.  She knows the threat-of-her-claws is power.
"Let me use my claws to snag the carpeting.  You'll get up to stop me.  I know you will.  Then I'll get kibble.  Or water.  Or you'll operate the all-night rotating doors."

I do not care to be woken at 4:00 a.m.
Kitty may have to be spending the rest of her nights on earth locked in the garage.

Well, I've been up for over two hours now.
At least I made a lot of headway on preparing Maggie's high school transcript in these early hours before sunrise.

Mildew

When house hunting, we looked closely for mildew.  Our realtor couldn't believe how many times I found tiny signs of mildew.  And when we did, we refused to consider the house.  We lived with enough mildew in our previous house and wanted to be away from it. 

Fetching the rocking horse out of the attic yesterday, I noticed one small spot on the roof boards with some signs of mildew beginning.  Argh!   A box (with no signs of mildew) that had been in the basement of the old house was now in the attic, shoved right up against the inside of the roof, and it spread.   The box is now in the garbage, and the inside of the roof has been scrubbed well with a bleach solution.  I've washed my hands at least a dozen times throughout the day, and I can still smell bleach on them.  Hopefully that's strong enough to kill kill kill that nastiness!

I guess we need to check other spots in the house to ensure adequate airflow.

Last Few Days

Matt had board-certification tests this week.  He takes them in Milwaukee instead of Chicago.  That meant Rachel had a couple of days to kill while he was at the test center.  They spent the evenings with his family, and she spent two days hanging around here.  It was SO nice to just be in the same house, not necessarily trying to focus on visiting, still doing chores or putzing outside, but just being together and getting plenty of time to chat.  Katie and the girls came over on Friday too, and six of us had a picnic on the deck.

We also had non-family company.  A gal from Duluth was visiting CUW.  Her dad and sister needed a place to stay, so they were with us for a night this week.

I had my weirdest day ever at work.  One sweet elderly woman came in with a check to cash, but she'd accidentally torn off the "micr numbers" on the bottom of the check, the numbers that tell which bank, which account at that bank, check number, and eventually the amount is encoded on that line too.  I also had a couple come in and tell me that they were going to take a half hour.  An exaggeration, of course.  But it wasn't.  At least they were very pleasant.  Some other weird stuff happened too.

Katie, Nathan, and the girls showed up this morning at work.  Katie needed quarters for laundry.  Alia enjoyed talking to the personal banker about the little solar-operated Happy Flower on her desk.  Zoe smiled shyly.  It was clear from the conversation that these were my grandbabies.  When they left, my co-workers asked, "So, was that your son?"  Not one of them -- all of them thought Nathan was my son, and Katie my daughter-in-law.  That was kinda sweet!

Gary did a gentle tilling over the asparagus patch.  The sedum and hostas are cleaned out from the winter crud.  Lilacs are starting to bud out.  My bleeding hearts are not thriving, but they did survive another winter.  I finished pruning the apples and cherries; I'm afraid I may have been overzealous with one of the apple trees.  I dug up around the fruit trees and now need to surround them with a hefty dose of manure.  I prepped one raised bed for planting and put in about 18" each of kohlrabi, spinach, beets, and lettuce.  I have grand plans to put out a new 3' row of lettuce/spinach every two weeks, so we can load up with salads in May and June. 

Maggie and I both need shorts.  I don't think there's anything in the basement that will fit either of us.  Bummers.  Take time for sewing, or take time for shopping.  Maybe I'll just keep wearing jeans when I'm working outside.  But that will wear out my jean-knees, prevent tanning, and make me hot.  Hmm, this problem must be solved.

Last Sunday Gary and I attended "To Kill a Mockingbird" downtown.  I had low expectations because of our only other visit to this theatre, but this show was well done!  One of my favorite actors played the bad guy.  At the end of the show, Jimmy (having played the racist bigot who framed a black man for his own crime) came out for the curtain call with his arm around the actor whom he'd done in.  It was classy.

Gary injured his hand several weeks ago, trying to open a car door that was frozen shut tighter than he realized.  Having given it time to improve, and having it get worse instead of better, he saw the doctor and is now on drugs for a week.

 

Performative Word

When God says something, it happens. What He says doesn't merely give information. His word makes stuff happen.

When He said, "Let there be light," there was light. And there's still light.

When He says, "I forgive you all your sins," then, by golly, those sins are forgiven. His word makes it so.

When He says, "This is My body," then something happens. That bread becomes His body.

His word created light. His word created fishes and birdies and critters. His word to "be fruitful and multiply" means that people are still having babies. His word at creation means that grass still grows and that we can expect our gardens to bring forth food for us this summer.

That's the "performative word." It doesn't just describe. It actually performs what it says. But does it matter HOW it's said?

I don't want to tread into a naughty ground that implies the words must be spoken just so, with the right inflections and the right tone and the right pauses and all that jazz, lest the words be powerless.  That'd just be stupid.

And yet, you've probably heard the same thing I've heard: people who can manage to speak words of sweet gospel with a demanding tone-of-voice, with a scolding face, managing to turn "Trust Me" into a damning command instead of a faith-kindling invitation.  You've heard people who can turn the Beatitudes into words of law about how we're supposed to act, instead of being the blessing that they are.  So does it matter how the words are spoken?

I was told recently that God's word must be spoken in God's way.

Wow.  That answers a lot of things.  That applies to the things I was just writing about.  But it also explains why kids playing church (baptizing dolls or pets, saying the Words of Institution) are not administering the sacraments.  These aren't magic words, incantations, effecting circumstances by their mere utterance.  But when God's word is spoken in God's way, it is performative.

Stuff

Perennial onions and cilantro are poking up in the garden.

Maggie and I are working on identifying trees in the pine family. Almost everything we find are spruces, with a pine here and there. No firs, no hemlocks, no junipers. I need to find an arboretum.

We saw the oral surgeon this week about the extraction of Maggie's wisdom teeth.  The doctor said she's one of the rare people who actually has room in her mouth for wisdom teeth, and they came in nicely, unimpacted.  But becauce of the vcfs, her teeth rot so badly.  Some molars erupt with decay already in them.  Wisdom teeth will rot.  Not "might rot."  But will.  So they must go.

One of my favorite talk-radio hosts suggested using Verify the Recall to get an idea of where people running for [non-partisan] local office stand on some issues.  It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I spent some time this evening looking up school board members and town board members.  The village board is a good deal more liberal than the board governing the township.  County board is next on the list.  If you're in Wisconsin, use the list.  (Of course, first you should verify whether your name was added without your signing.  Not that I would ever suggest that there were irregularities or forgeries on these petitions....)

We stayed up too late last night, hoping for better ogling of the northern lights. All we found was ever-so-faint ones. But hey! Northern lights! Cool -- even if they are so faint as to be nearly invisible.

My regularly-scheduled days at work are going to be changing in mid-spring. I was SO looking forward to being able to attend symposium this year. Alas, I am again going to miss much of it. At least I make it through Passiontide this year, still with the bestest imaginable work-schedule.  My schedule will presumably change again in fall, when one of my co-workers begins a new semester in college and her class schedule changes.  This makes it hard to figure out what days to buy APT tickets for.

Athena has gotten snugly in her old age.  She likes sleeping with a person.  She will jump up on laps and ask to be petted.  Last night, our bedroom door did not latch when we closed it.  You know the game king-of-the-hill?  Well, I was the hill, and there was a cat-spat over domination of the hill, and who got to sleep on my back.  Silly girls.

Maggie had a hankering for cookies. So for some unreasonable reason, we threw together a batch of chocolate chip cookies  last night. Mmmmmm. Warm cookies!

Psalm 77 -- The Cliff's Notes Version

Verses 1-9 Asaph says that he keeps praying, but it sure looks like God doesn't care.

Verses 10-14 He says he will remember what God done.

Verses 15-20 Asaph recites the events of the exodus. That stuff was history hundreds of years previous. Asaph wasn't remembering something God had done specifically in his life, at least not something that was unique to his life. Asaph wasn't talking about a recent miracle. He went back hundreds of years; he spoke of the same old events that were sung about in all the hymns, over and over. What kind of help would that be?

All the help in the world!
Our God is funny that way.
Reciting the "same old things" that He did a long time ago, that is where we find our help and our comfort. That is where we learn that His promises are sure and certain. That is where we learn that He is for us.

Zoe and the Shark

We went to the science museum last week.

Alia peeking through the window of the boat.

Zoe could have hung out at the aquarium for hours.

Maggie peeking through the window too.

Nanna-mobile

I have car seats in my back seat.

And a cell phone in my front seat. But I was a good nanna and gave the cell phone back to its owner.

Perfectly Balanced

After 15 months, I finally had a month where my drawer at work was balanced every day, there was no need to contact customers to correct errors I made, and all my paperwork ran through the "proof machine" without mistakes.  That means I finally made the Perfectly Balanced List.

Thing is, there were a couple of mistakes I made that were the kind that didn't show up in the place that counts toward being perfectly balanced.  So I was feeling guilty for making the list.  (Some way to hit my first time on the poster, eh?)  Then I was the only one from our branch who made it this month, and my boss praised me before the rest of the employees.  More guilt.  Then to top it off, I won the drawing for a restaurant gift-card.  I didn't even know that making the list made you eligible for a prize, but I won it, the very first time I made the list.  More guilt. 

Can I enjoy the lovely dinner-date with Gary even if I know I don't deserve the prize?

At least Gary's having fun with this.  Look at the name of my blog and the reason I chose that name.  Gary keeps laughing at the words "perfectly balanced" being used in conjunction with me in any way, shape, or form!

God's Memory

Psalm 78 tells what God had done for His people: He brought them out of Egypt, fed them manna, gave them water to drink in the wilderness, defeated their enemies, and so forth.  Then I hit verse 53 where the Israelites are at the edge of the Red Sea:
He led them on safely
so that they did not fear.

They did not fear?!  Bwaaa haaa haaa haaaa!

Sorry.  That was my first reaction.
My second reaction was, "God, are You reading the same Bible I'm reading?"

Sorry.  That would be sassy, wouldn't it?

But then I started thinking about Hebrews 11.  Abraham, the man of great faith.  God didn't seem to remember that little incident in Egypt with Abraham's wife being married off to the pharaoh.  How about Isaac blessing Jacob "in faith"?  Not because of trickery and deceit?  Or how about David, the man after God's own heart, whose tale was told by Hollywood in the 50's because "telling a Bible story" was the only way they could get that much smuttiness and violence past the movie censors back then?

God calls them holy.
God calls them righteous.
God's memory isn't like mine.

According to Your mercy remember me,
for Your goodness' sake, O Lord.  (Psalm 25)
 

Harvey

We recently watched the Jimmy Stewart movie about the fellow who had a 6'-tall invisible rabbit for a pal.  Watching something like that makes you wonder about how society --then and now-- responded/responds to those who are mentally ill.  Did society used to have more tolerance of people who were odd or melancholy or hallucinating?

I have a theory.  Crimes used to be punished.  Violence was not allowed to get out of hand.  If someone was weird --but not a threat to others-- then that guy was allowed to be weird.  But if he was a danger to others (such as someone with lots of knives, who had made threats) then there was no dinking around with his rights.  If he was threatening other folks' rights, he was locked up.  Because we are accustomed to the breakdown of society and our unwillingness to call sin sin, does that make us unwilling to deal swiftly and firmly with the mentally ill when they are dangerous?  And does that make us uncomfortable being around anyone odd or quirky ... never knowing whether this is a safe person or not?

Mission Province in Sweden

The news is not good.

It's debatable whether the state church in Sweden is even Christian.  Some of the pastors who love their Lord and yearn to preach His gospel purely have associated themselves with the Mission Province. Among the many theological problems in the state church, some of the outwardly obvious are women's ordination and the blessing of homosexuality.  The state church (aka, the government) warned pastors not to officiate in services of the Mission Province's koinonias, and not to perform ecclesiastical acts, at risk of being defrocked.  Not only does this threaten the pastors' office and income, but it threatens the laymen with the loss of their shepherds.

Please pray for our Scandinavian brothers.