Junior High Drama presents The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe April 21 & 22
Come enjoy this classic tale by C.S. Lewis and presented by our junior high thespians! The four Pevensy children are sent to the English countryside to live with their mysterious uncle. When Lucy discovers a wardrobe in the spare room, an adventure begins that none of them were expecting. Curtain is at 7 pm both nights. $3 each; $10 per family
BaseCamp April 10: Who Wears the Pants? Kids or Parents?
In the late 1950s the sitcom “Father Knows Best” ran for six successful seasons. Jim Anderson was the confident father who was clearly the loving authority in his home, along with his wife, Margaret. Whenever their children Betty, Bud, and Kathy needed advice on anything at all, they always turned to their father, because he “knew best.” A mere 30 years later, the Simpsons debuted in 1990 with the plot being the antics of the know it all pre-teen son Bart Simpson and his buffoon father, Homer, who was clearly out of control as a father and husband and the brunt of most jokes on the show. It is a parody of American family and culture that now claims to be the longest running American sitcom in history! And while these sitcom examples are somewhat extreme and obvious, it isn’t so clear how 21st century parents, who want to lead their children to Christ and a successful future, navigate how much to protect and guide and how much to allow independence and even difficulty. Have you ever felt this way? Summer is coming. Are you dreading it? Are your kids complaining all the time? Are you conflicted about being too “strict” or too “loving?” Is it easier to just give in rather than get your kids to do what you want? Let’s discuss these issues together! Monday, April 10th in our school library @ 7:00 pm. SPECIAL GUEST Jim Mhoon | former VP of Content Development at Focus on the Family, Family Counselor, Media Consultant & Publisher Jim has been developing content for books, videos, websites, magazines, membership programs and events since 1991. A highlight of Jim’s time at Focus on the Family was launching a club version of the popular Adventures in Odyssey program that now has thousands of members from all over the world. Jim has been involved with a variety of organizations including CRISTA Ministries, Partners International, Medical Teams International, CRU, Operation Christmas Child and Compassion International. Aside from his B.A. and Masters degrees, Jim is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. Join other parents as we discuss the New York Times bestseller by Leonard Sax. In The Collapse of Parenting, physician, psychologist, and internationally acclaimed author Leonard Sax presents data documenting a dramatic decline in the achievement and psychological health of American children. Sax argues that rising levels of obesity, depression, and anxiety among young people—as well as the explosion in prescribing psychiatric medications to kids—can all be traced to parents letting their kids call the shots. This BaseCamp will also be live streamed on the Ambrose Facebook page. PLEASE RSVP! To ensure we have enough seating, please let us know if you are coming. We will also be offering childcare. Tell us in your RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. $5 per hour per child. RSVP FOR BASECAMP 4/10
Sexualized Kids: Pam Stenzel coming to Boise Feb. 26
Sexualized Kids Our children are under a constant stream of messages from the media that run opposite from a Biblical worldview on dating, sex and marriage. While it is the prerogative of the family to teach and protect our children, it is increasingly difficult in a smart-phone enabled, sexually saturated, hook-up culture world. If you have children 14 and up, you do not want to miss this opportunity to have them hear national Christian speaker Pam Stenzel and her talk “The High Cost of Free Love.” Her message is upbeat, compelling and age appropriate for today’s Christian teenagers to hear directly the reason and urgency for healthy relationships and abstinence before marriage. See a clip HERE. You are encouraged to attend with them. Sunday, February 26th 4:00pm to 6:00pm at Cole Valley Christian Church. Thanks to a generous parent who felt so strongly about this event they have underwritten the cost, it is only $5 per person in advance. Tickets are available in the Ambrose School office. Please stop by during office hours or email office@theambroseschool.org to reserve your tickets. $10 at the door day of the event. Tickets can also be purchased online through Eventbrite. This event is co-sponsored along with Cole Valley Christian School and Nampa Christian Schools. Questions? Email office@theambroseschool.org.
BaseCamp: “Real World” Ready – Will My Kids Be Prepared? March 7 @ 7pm
Few parents or grandparents at Ambrose grew up being classically Christian educated and are often left wondering if this unique form of education is the best for their child beyond early grammar school. What good is Latin when we need to learn Spanish or Chinese in today’s world? Why study “old dead white guys” when the world is becoming increasingly diverse and even suspicious of these old patriarch writers and thinkers? Is science education suffering at the cost of “esoteric” ancient Greek writings? Why work so hard when other schools make earning an “A” so much easier? Will Ambrose kids be able to keep their faith if they haven’t been exposed to more secular challenges until college? Should Christians even be reading pagan literature? Isn’t the Bible enough? Come hear answers to these and other questions at our next BaseCamp Forum . Tuesday, March 7th in our school library @ 7:00 pm. Join Davies Owens, David Goodwin (Former Head of School and ACCS president) and our special guest, 9th grade teacher and parent Joe Gerber. Joe is a former social worker with a unique perspective on education style and how it impacts lives. Joe has taught in both the grammar and upper schools at Ambrose. This BaseCamp will also be live streamed on the Ambrose Facebook page. PLEASE RSVP! To ensure we have enough seating, please let us know if you are coming. We will also be offering childcare. Tell us in your RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. $5 per hour for first child/$2 for each additional. RSVP FOR BASECAMP 3/7
BaseCamp: “Kids & Money” Thursday, January 26 @ 7 pm
How do you teach your children to be wise with money? Join us Thursday at 7 pm to learn from other parents and financial experts on some of the best ways to instill healthy money habits in your children. Our panelists will give short presentations and then there will time for Q&A. Let’s talk about: Allowance Consumerism Stewardship Giving Spending and Saving Panelists: Bruce MacMahon | father of five Ambrose graduates; Director of Accounting & Financial Reporting for Idaho Power Company; serves on the board of two non-profit ministries Brian Wiley | Financial Advisor; host of “Idaho’s Money Show” on 580 KIDO weeknights from 6-7pm Todd Krafft | MBA, RICP, FIC, Financial Consultant PLEASE RSVP! To ensure we have enough seating, please let us know if you are coming. We will also be offering childcare. Tell us in your RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. $5 per hour for first child/$2 for each additional. RSVP FOR BASECAMP 1/26
Feed the Need is coming February 10th
ARE YOU READY? We are excited to have our second community event that will help Feed the Need and put 60,000 meals on Treasure Valley tables! We will once again partner with Homestead Ministries of Colfax WA, and the Boise Rescue Mission to package 60,000 (or more!) meals to be distributed to those in need throughout the Treasure Valley. Homestead Ministries purchases or procures donations of locally grown grains such as beans, peas, lentils, wheat, and barley from farmers and processors, along with spices, bags, and labels. These items will be brought to the school on Friday, February 10th. Stations will be set up in the gym and teams of students will come throughout the day to mix 10,000 1 lb. soup packages – enough to equal 60,000 meals. Homestead Ministries began in August 2014 when friends Tom Riedner and Greg Nolan saw an opportunity to help reduce the hunger problem in the Northwest. Their desire is to use locally produced agricultural products to feed the hungry efficiently and generously using Christian values. Most people do not realize grains have different grades. Homestead purchases (in some cases grains are donated) these rich resources that do not make the exceptional grade for the marketplace but that are equal in nutritional value from the processors at reduced prices. A soup mix recipe is then created with the appropriate spices, and all the supplies are brought to volunteer groups for assembly. This process has provided thousands of meals that are distributed through local shelters, churches, and food banks. According to Tom Riedner, “At Homestead Ministries we try to plant a seed for compassion. We have one mission that stands out from our other goals and that is to spread Christ’s Love and Understanding, one soup packet at a time. By developing a soup recipe using locally grown commodities and distributing the product to the hungry across the Pacific Northwest, we feel Homestead Ministries is doing just that. Our desire is to help people feed their families by providing a delicious, nutritious protein-based product to improve their lives. Our intent is to feed all that are hungry so nobody is turned away.” Boise Rescue Mission will be one recipient of the finished soup mixes, which they will use both in food boxes for families, and daily meals at their four area shelters. “We sincerely appreciate Homestead Ministries and The Ambrose School of Meridian for making this generous gift of much needed food. As we continue to serve over 1,100 meals each day and provide over 400 safe nights of shelter daily, this gift insures that the mission will continue to meet the needs of homeless and hungry people,” says Jason Billester of Boise Rescue Mission. Kirk Vander Leest, Headmaster of The Ambrose School says, “Part of what makes this program so successful is the volunteer manpower – or kidpower, as the case may be. Although monetary donations are always vitally important to any charitable organization, we as a school are able to provide 500 willing and able students in one location to produce a huge amount of food in less than six hours. This is not only extremely efficient, but a great opportunity for our kids to serve others in their own backyard.” 7.3 percent of Idaho’s residents are food insecure — 274,230 people or 1 in 6. More than 23 percent of Idaho’s children are food insecure — 96,090 children or 1 in 4. Of the 274,230 food-insecure people, about 120,429 have incomes that make them eligible for food stamps. Around 56,200 have incomes which make them eligible for WIC and reduced-price school meals, but not food stamps.The other 90,991 have incomes which make them ineligible for public assistance, according to the Idaho Foodbank. These people rely on private charities, such as a church food pantry or the Idaho Foodbank. (source: Idaho Foodbank) 2015 FEED THE NEED REPORT After partnering with Homestead Ministries and the Boise Rescue Mission to help those in need throughout the Treasure Valley, we set a goal to provide 10,000 bags of soup mix to be distributed to the community. So on September 25th, 2015, we started at about 8:30 am with our kindergarten students who jumped right into the task at hand. We kept a tally on our gym scoreboard and watched the numbers creep up as Greg Nolan of Homestead Ministries announced totals and updated the board. There were tables of students madly sticking labels onto the bags, and a merry-go-round of workers assembling the spice packets – a different combination for each type of soup. Then there were the tables where workers had an assembly line – drop in the spice packet, scoop the appropriate amount of beans, pour into the bag, then take it to the sealers. The sealers then laid the bags across the machine, pressed it, and handed the bag back to be packed into the boxes. Students in their red Feed the Need t-shirts took shifts throughout the day, and by the time the upper school students took over, boxes full of 3-bean, lentil, and split pea soup packages were stacking up on the side of the gym, ready to be hauled off by the Boise Rescue Mission and other churches and food banks. Homestead Ministries are experts at setting up an efficient production process, providing all the equipment and materials plus the beans, lentils, and peas. The process was simple, and the students thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to serve. By 2:00 pm, we had 8,000 bags packaged and ready! We weren’t the only ones excited about this event – we were honored to have First Lady Lori Otter, state senator Chuck Winder, and Deputy Chief Tracy Basterrechea join students at the workstations to help fill some bags! We also had visits from Eagle mayor Jim Reynolds and Ken Corder from the City of Meridian, along with representatives from the local media. We invited 94.1 KBXL to do a live broadcast from the school, and invited anyone in need of food to come by. In the evening,
Base Camp: Followup to Josh McDowell’s “Online Dangers” Workshop
BaseCamp 3 on Monday, Dec 12th will be with a panel made up of pastors, parents, and web experts, including a special live interview with Sam Black of CovenantEyes, one of the leading filtering and accountability softwares on the market. This helpful session will move from defining “the problem” which Josh directly presented (see his talk if you missed it) to more hands on solutions that you can implement in your home. This will be for parents of students in K-12. To help us gauge seating needs, please RSVP to mvernon@theambroseschool.org. Here are a few links and resources from Josh McDowell’s workshop: Video recording of workshop on our Facebook page. Click on “Videos” and find Heroic Truth With Josh McDowell – Online Dangers. Resources to combat Pornography All of Josh’s research and additional resources can be found on josh.org. Please RSVP to the office. Childcare available.
‘The Hope of Christmas’ December 6th at The Morrison Center
For the second year in a row, our music program has received a generous grant from the Morrison Foundation to present our traditional Christmas concert featuring all K – 6 students along with the upper school choirs, orchestra and special groups at their famed venue, the Velma V. Morrison Performing Arts Center. The program is known for its traditional sounds of Christmas from the middle ages through the early 20th century. Chimes, strings, timpani, children and youth voices create a beautiful evening of Christmas joy. This year’s theme is ‘The Hope of Christmas’ reflecting the hope that was born to all mankind on Christmas Day. Special groups performing include the 4th – 6th grade hand chimes, Cantavi (4th – 6th honors choir), Gaudeo (9th – 12th honors choir), a solo flutist and a guest professional brass quintet. A full orchestra and all K – 6 students will also present. The show will open with a big arrangement of “Joy to the World” for all singers, full orchestra, and Glory Brass, our guest professional brass quintet. The second piece, also featuring all combined musical resources, will be “Cradle Hymn,” a lovely new piece by Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen. Linnea Johnson will perform a solo flute feature by Bach, the Largo e dolce from Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030. Hand Chimes will play “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and we will conclude with the massed ensemble performing “Hallelujah” from Handel’s Messiah. Come celebrate the birth of our Savior on December 6th beginning at 7:00 pm. Invite family, neighbors, and friends to come enjoy this beautiful and stirring musical presentation featuring centuries of song performed by our students. BUY TICKETS HERE LIVESTREAM OF CHRISTMAS PROGRAM AVAILABLE ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE Ambrose families: Please contact the office for the Ambrose family discount code.
