Taekwon-Dos

Thursday night is a longer night at taekwondo, with two classes back-to-back for the school year.  She starts out with her regular belt class, and then goes on to her leadership class immediately afterwards.  In leadership class, they're all still swinging those staffs around, learning different positions and maneuvers.  It was raining quite a bit today, and that seems to be the forecast for the next week or two, including a possible impact from some storms swooshing in from the Atlantic.  Two storms with a bit of a kick. Two classes.  We'll call that Taekwon-dos. 

Speaking of Spanish, Madison had some fun today with a Spanish game of "Family Feud," one that pitted one team against the other, seeing who knows the Spanish alphabet better.  It was a close match, and Madison was put on the spot, but she did well, and her team eventually came out on top.  If you listened carefully, you could just make out the sounds of celebration in Spanish, accompanied by gunshots in the air and a ranchero band singing their new song, "El Equipo Victorioso."  

No challenge has defeated them yet.

For each knows the Spanish alphabet!

Their team sent captina to fight

¡Caray!  Maddie got her answers right! 

Like most winning teams, but more so.

Quienes son ellos?  It's El Equipo Victorioso!

It's a catchy tune.  Gets stuck in your head.  Anyway, she helped her team win.  She's really enjoying Spanish.  She's not enjoying other classes as much.  For example, Science.  Presently, it's rather boring.  Not Boron.  Boring.  She's learning some vocabulary, and it's largely about atoms and the Periodic Table of Elements.  Speaking of which:

How often do they add new elements to that table?

Periodically.  

Yes, that was awful.  Anyway, today Madison also got the results of her pre-test for ELA.  This is the test that the students take that determines how much they know before they cover the material for the year.  I say that to set up the fact that the students traditionally aren't supposed to do that well on a pre-test, as it is stuff that they haven't covered yet.  She got a 78 on the test!  So yes, it might be a unique year for ELA!

She's been reading her book "Lost Stars" again, and yes, this is the third time.  She read forty pages or so, which she's quite proud of.  She's got some real momentum on this one, and that's amazing given that she's already read the thing twice before. But she really likes this book, and now suddenly I might need to read it myself.

I was working today, and returning some books to the library as well.  I have to get another book or two, as I've enjoyed reading on the back deck.  The weather has been comfortable at dawn and dusk, and even with the rain, it's been nice.  

Okay, so we're going back to KidPak again in person.  Yes, the planning is in place, and the idea is September 13th.  We're gearing up for that.  I was working on our "Trailblazers" series, and I believe we'll be doing "Time Travelers" after that.  I have to do a new devotional for that one.  But each of these is only a month long.  The reason for this is the nature of our return:  we're not going back to the large auditorium at first, but rather the individual classrooms.  It'll be somewhat of a small group environment.  No sense in bringing back a big set when the kids are going to be in the classrooms.  We'll get back to the auditorium again soon.  

August 30th is a day that we'll be doing a big outdoor service, and you'll see more on that here as we get there.  Despite there not being a children's service outdoors (the outdoor service is a family service), we'll still have a presence there, and giveaways.  I'm working on those now, along with the books.  Lots to do!

Tonight we prayed and read of course, this time from another Star Wars book that we've been doing, "Allegiance."  It's been a solid read, and the girls have enjoyed hearing about Mara Jade, and the other main characters of the Star Wars galaxy.  I'm hoping that some day Mara will be reintroduced into the Star Wars story, but until then, it's been great reading about her each night.

We said our prayers for Ba-Ba, of course.  And the world.  So much going on, and we're trusting in the Lord, despite all that seems to be going on.  Some day we'll look back on 2020 with a more balanced view, hopefully one that sees all the positive things that happened as well.  We'll be okay.