Today Mr. Pete and I took Sam to one of our local Catholic high schools to take a placement/scholarship test. In all of Sam’s academic career, this is the first BIG test that he has ever had to take with a roomful of other students. He was a little nervous.
When I first started my homeschooling endeavor, I did give my first son the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (I think that was it) when he was in first grade. In Ohio you have to be above the 25th percentile for the whole test to be acceptable. Calvin scraped by at the 26th percentile. That was the last time I tested any of my children. What that test showed me was that you have to be a good reader to be a good tester. You just do. Calvin totally bombed out on the vocabulary part of the test and he had a wonderful vocabulary for a 6-year-old! But he couldn’t read any of those words so he just guessed and he failed miserably.
So we have always done the other option in our household since then of seeing a certified teacher (ours has a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and is a reading specialist) to view our portfolios. I really like that option better because it’s so much more holistic. Dr. Holinga sees how we are as a family, and she evaluates each child as a complete person with outside activities as well as academics.
But I digress.
Sam then had very little experience with test taking. And he was nervous. When we went to pick him up three hours later I was a little anxious about what we would find, but Sam seemed very calm, happy to be done, and hungry. (Aren’t 13-year-old boys always hungry?) Overall the testing experience was a good one! He felt that he had done very well on the math portion. (Thank you Saxon math!!!) He said he saw a lot of problems that he and his grandma had already covered. He said there were harder problems and algebra too, but I told him lots of times these tests cover a wide range of difficulty just so that they can better place the students. He thought he did well on the language arts too, but he also said that he needs to work on spelling and that he needs to read faster. He really felt that his reading speed is holding him back. Dr. Holinga did listen to Sam read this year and she felt that he was an excellent reader, but reading well aloud and reading speed for comprehension are different skills. We will spend more time working on reading comprehension and speed from now on. He also said, “Mom, could I please have more spelling?” I never thought I would ever hear “please” and “Spelling” in the same sentence from him unless the word “stop” was in there too!
So it was good. I plan to have him take the achievement/placement test at the other local Catholic High School as well. I might even see if he can take the Ohio Graduation Tests when the time comes too. Not because he has to, but because I think it might just be the time in life for him to have more practice taking these kinds of tests.
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Speaking of Calvin, he is now attending his second homecoming dance, with a different girl, within the past four weeks.
Whoever said that homeschooling will make children unsocialized should meet my oldest boy, who was homeschooled until just a few years ago! The phone rings off of the hook, his cell phone is constantly out of minutes, and he gets letters from girls he has met all of the time! Clearly the boy is socialized!! He even ordered his own corsage this time too.
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I spent the afternoon with my sister. I have mentioned throughout the blog at times that my sister left the church for a time. Now she is back and spiritually I think she’s miles ahead of me. We went to the cemetery and visited Raphael and my dad’s grave site. We went for a walk. We had a nice lunch at Subway. It was nice to be just the two of us with no husbands, no kids, and not even mom. Just us. We really need to do that more. Afterwards she was determined to make it to confession and so she made me go too. She has been making the effort to go every month and she didn’t want to miss.
Our confessor was from Africa, but his English was very good. He listened to my confession and gave some very helpful suggestions. He was particularly interested when I told him that I felt I was butting in too much with guiding my older two sons. But he really felt that it was my job to give guidance, suggestions and even mandates if necessary. He suggested praying more to the Holy Spirit for Guidance – a very good suggestion.
Then he gave me a penance – to say the Rosary (how appropriate!) This it the longest penance I have ever ever received in all of the years I have been going to confession. The last time I went I had to look up a bible passage in the gospel of Matthew. Is this a new trend? Harder penances? I’m not complaining. I think it makes it more meaningful in a way and it certainly keeps the focus on being penintent longer than an Our Father and a Hail Mary. My sister got the same penance.
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Arwen had her baby girl today. I’ve really been thinking about babies and children a lot and how fast it all goes by. I remember after Calvin was born, lying in my hospital bed having an anxiety attack about how to take care of a baby, how to potty train a toddler, how to do all of these mothering type of things that I had no clue about! And then I calmed myself down and said I would just take it one day at a time. Many, many days later my baby is driving a young lady to a high school dance and will be a legal adult in just a nine short months. It went by in an instant.
By the time Rosie is a legal adult, I will be a senior citizen. That really freaks me out. But what I do see clearly now, perhaps more so than when I had my first baby, is that none of it is to be taken for granted and that you really need to savor every day. I don’t think you can tell that to a new mom. I think it just has to be experienced.
Have a nice evening.
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