Monday, June 18, 2007

Victorious

Last night, we had a meeting of the education committee. After much discussion, I presented the reviews I've done of several curricula, and recommended that we pursue the DiscipleLand Core Bible Curriculum and Bible Study Guide (thank you, Al, for telling me that they were still in print and development!). The only issue is that BSG doesn't go below 3 years old, and DLCBC doesn't go below 2. Apparently our church buys curriculum for the cradle roll class. Does anyone have a recommendation for the cradle roll curriculum? We basically decided we could use a different one for the babies than for everyone else.

So, I'm working on getting samples of those curricula and with any luck, we'll have a decision in time for the fall quarter.

It's funny--NO ONE in that meeting liked the 21st Century stuff. NONE of the teachers thought the kids were learning anything.

Pat, who is pretty much in charge of the ed committee, said that she thought the best curriculum she had ever seen was the Bible Study Guide. I agree--but if she thought it was the best, if she knew what great curriculum looked like, why were we paying for 21st Century all this time? WHY?

Anyway, both of the options that I recommended were head and shoulders above any of the others I looked at, or that the church had used. Everyone agreed that I should get samples for all ages and have the teachers take a look and make a decision. The great thing is, I don't really care which way they choose. They can pick either one, and it would be a good choice.

I'm just happy I've finally levered the boulder a bit...maybe it will move under its own momentum now.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Hi!

I hope you haven't all given up on me.
We've finally moved into our new house, but we don't have internet there yet.

My office kind of frowns on internet for personal stuff....and I can't focus enough to write anything worth reading here, anyway.

A few thoughts:
At Mars Hill, they have one adult assigned to each child, as a mentor. Could we do that at my church? That would be very cool, but we have a rough time even finding enough people to teach classes...

I emailed Lambert asking for samples of their curriculum, and instead, they sent me an order form. Has anyone else out there used Lambert? Al Bugg sent me a wonderful packet of materials, and he recommends them. We'll see.

And also our kids are a little ambivalent to their new teachers. I hope they chill out about that--the couple teaching them are very sweet people.

That's really all I can write here. It's just too crazy and distracting, and I'm not really supposed to be doing this anyway.

Teaching teen girls to make communion bread tonight....should be interesting.

That's all folks. I'll be back to regular updates whenever we get our magical internet from the sky.