2009 Year in Review

A long but not exhaustive list of our doings and learnings in 2009
Zoe
Music
Achievement in Music Test - Got the highest score you can get
Choir concerts - June, September moved up to Concert Choir
Piano Recitals - April - August - October
Started with new piano teacher - Nov
Mary Poppins musical
Talet show - solffeggeito
Sang and modeled at Asian Festival



Languages
Started Hebrew School
Japanese - moved up to year two college text

Physical Education
Promoted twice in Gymnasics


New
OnlineG3 for Lightening Literature
Continue the Story and Mini-World
First role-playing game

Saw
The Miracle Worker and asked a question of Sean Astin
Star Trek original series and all the movies
Children's Film Festival
Native American Pow Wow
Folkloric Dancers
Shakespeare Festival
Farscape (censored for content)
Firefly (censored for content)


The Language Arts - some of the things she learned with Michael Clay Thompson

Poetry- simile, metaphor, rhyme, end rhyme, internal rhyme, eye, rhyme, masculine rhyme, feminine rhyme, near rhyme, end stopped and end jambed, iamb, trochee, personification, dactyl, anapest, spondee,

The 5 paragraph essay, formal writing, sentence diagramming, mood and tone, show, not tell

Vocabulary - placate, retort, benevolent, importune, tacit, sanguine, mortify, ignominy, verdure, orthodox, ostentatious, inexorable, obsequious, and equivocal.

Latin stems - vita, paterm pop mar, luc, tempor, curr, migr, plu, germ, rupt, junct, amat, stell, tang, clam, medi, grat, trans

Literature - Lightning Lit with OnlineG3
G.K. Chesterton, Issac Singer, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nathanial Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Gerald Durrell, J.R.R. Tolkien, and lots of poetry

Wrote a book called The Two Stars



Reading - Treasure Island, A Day of Pleasure by Issac Singer, Wakefield by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Christmas Carol, My family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, The Hobbit, Julie of the Wolves, From the Mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Westing Game, The Moffats, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, Swallows and Amazons and Peter Duck, The Name of this book is Secret and If you're reading this its too late, the Percy Jackson series, Anastasia Krupnik, The Children of the Green Knowe, Five Children and It, The Sword Thief, Odd and the Frost Giants, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables


Social Studies
History - Ice Age in the Americas, Inuit, Anasazi, potlatches, Plains indians, The Mound-Builders, The Indians of the Eastern Forests, Iroquois, Vikings in America, Gutenberg's printing press, Christopher Columbus, Zheng He, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Mesoamerica, Conquistadors, Cortez, Aztecs, Incas, Coronado, Queen Elizabeth, Roanoke, Sir, Francis Drake, Protestant and Catholic religion, Martin Luther, Jamestown, Caesar's Rome, Attended seminar on history of Panama and Costa Rica
Culture - Aruba, Panama, Costa Rica, Columbia, Mexico, Australia
Geography - Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, the 50 nifty United States, map skills, Caribbean
Research report on the endangered koala
Traveled through the Panama Canal



Science
Water Cycle, humidity, states of matter, freezing point, boiling point, melting, condensation, evaporation, plant reproductive cycle, developing a hypothesis, measuring data, writing a lab report, the scientific method, chromosomes, DNA, RNA, Ethics in genetic modification,
Critical thinking, energy sources, solar energy, Industrial Revolution, the nervous system - autonomic/somatic, meiosis, eukaryote, prokaryote, four phases of mitosis, passive transport, genetics, solstice and equinox, Brain (and nerves, neurons, sight sound, taste and smell), digestive system, 6 kingdoms, Thomas Edison, extremophiles, types of rocks, mineral identification, crystals, space, photosynthesis, respiratory system, cellular respiration,



Math
Summer Math Academy - Solved Rubix cubes, Origami, base 5, base 2, binary calculator,
Math Center - two math presentations: Fractals and Binary
Singapore Math (decimals, percentages, angles, average and rate, data analysis, geometry, measurement, )
Go Figure,
Life of Fred Beginning Algebra- (numbers and sets, integers, equations, motion and mixture



Technology
Voice Threads, Glogger, Xtimeline, Eluminate, Garage Band

Art
Space, line texture, form,shading, value, local value

Other
Asked the four questions at our Passover Seder
Shooting an air rifle
How to whittle with a knife
How to make soup out of a can
Got a new bicycle
Open Book Festival volunteer
Met Mary Jo a.k.a. Mrs. Puff from Spongebob
Astronaut theme birthday party


Pere:
Was accepted into Notre Dame MBA program
Wrote 5 songs
Learned to bake bread
Won singing competition on cruise
Attended seminar on MBTI
Attended seminar on history of Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica
Successful year at work


Mere:
Hosted niece's graduation party, Passover, Halloween Party, Astronaut theme birthday party
Started writing novel
Painted the castle lavender
Researched Myers Brigg Type Indicator, INTJ, HSP, Dabraowski's theory of Positive Disintegration, Dabrowski's overexcitabilities, Introversion, Gifted Women, Dreams,
Blogged
Attended seminar on MBTI
Attended seminar on history of Panama and Costa Rica
Volunteered as a Wild Thing for the Open Book Festival
Happy year homeschooling Zoe


All of us.
Travels
Florida - Kennedy Space Center, Los Angeles
Shedd Aquarium in Chicago
South Bend Zoo
Tubing down Turkey Creek River
Lake Michigan Beach
Cruise - Arbuba, Cartegena, Columbia, Panama Canal, Panama, Costa Rica, Hayltaco Mexica, Alcapulco Mexico, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico - Saw howler monkeys, iguanas, crocodiles and a Coati on Jungle River Raft in Costa Rica
Jet Skied through Lands End in Mexico
Harry Potter exhibit in Chicago
Informal Davidson Gathering in Chicago




Got a baby grand piano
Planted a Hemlock Tree
Finished Zoe's castle

Avatar and Sherlock Holmes reviews without spoilers

We don't celebrate Christmas. So this year it is a nice four day weekend for Pere.

We saw Avatar on Thursday and Sherlock Holmes on Friday.

Avatar was worth seeing. It was very beautiful. We saw it in 3D which I was worried about at first because 3D usually gives me a headache. But this 3D was really clean and really good. Almost every scene was 3D, but not really "in your face."

The story of Avatar was only okay. Nothing new or original, no new ground broken. But you can say that about a lot of enjoyable movies. It is too bad that James Cameron didn't give us a storyline as elevated as the visuals.

Friday we went to see Sherlock Holmes. I am such a fanboy! I have read all the original Sir Conan Doyle stories more than once (and now I want to read them again.) I love Holmes. And this movie made me love Watson even more. Watson was always capable of being played like Jude Law did it, it is in the television and movie versions that we get a comic relief Watson. But in the books he was always a capable guy and into the ladies.

Sherlock was pretty crazy, according to Watson, and I loved the way Robert Downey Jr played him. He showed Sherlock as a genius that is close to madness, his bad ass skills with fighting and detecting (yes Sherlock did now boxing, sword fighting, etc) and my favorite was showing his confusion in trying to deal with feelings.. RD jr. did a really good job with that, it was all in his eyes.

The villain, Lord Blackwood, was not atypical for a Sherlock Holmes story but I really wasn't that worried about him.

Sherlock Holmes was also a very visually attractive film, the dark streets and waterways of London were like Gothic paintings in some scenes. The fights scenes were visceral and easily navigable by the eye (in so many movies these days you can't realy tell what is happening during fight scenes.)

I like S.H. more than Avatar, but that could be because I am such a fan of the former.

Winter Traditions - Wishes and Candle Light

Yesterday we made a Wishing Tree out of my seasonal tree



I made cards tied with ribbons to write the wishes on with glitter pens


Here are our first wishes


Today for Winter Solstice, at sunset, I lit candles all over the house and turned out all the lights.


We ate dinner by candlelight, we lingered and told lots of jokes. We played games, then Zoe went to bed with a candle.


Merry Solstice!

Zoe's bedroom

Zoe and I cleaned her bedroom today. She did most of the work.

She has so many treasures.


This room really shows her personality.


She has collected many little things over the years; erasers, penguins, Hello Kitties, masks, and more.


She was so happy with how clean it is that she wanted me to take a picture of her.


Then she just got silly. :)




She's a happy girl. :)

Peeps

I had some good times with my peeps this week.

I had a long phone call with my bf in SoCal.

I spent too much time with my girlfriends on Facebook LMAO at pictures from Regretsy, Engrish and People of Walmart. *ouch!*

I got drunk on too much caffeine in the form of Boba tea talked about... way too much stuff.

I shared commiserating emails with my S.B. bf that moved all the way to Washington.

I set up dates with our fabulous Fort Wayne peeps and maybe one with the Naperville folks.

It can be hard to have most of my friends living so far away. Thank god for the internet.

My plan, art and math

I always wanted Zoe to be well educated. I planned for her education to be deep and high. I wanted her to be challenged because meeting challenges or even attempting to, help us grow.

I wanted her to have a liberal education, one not defined by her interests and her own narrow knowledge of what there is to learn. I believe in the value of standing on the shoulders of giants.

Her disinterest in a subject would be a challenge to me to find a way to change her mind. I wanted her to see for herself the worth of what she is learning and to be intrinsically motivated to be a scholar, and to make curiosity and learning a habit.

I believe in her. There is really no question that she is capable of all this. I know because she continuously surprises me by being more capable that I assumed.

I have to wonder if she is falling in line with my vision of an education or if, over the years, it grew organically based on Zoe's own inclinations.

In any case I am really happy with how our homeschooling is going.

I am so grateful for all the great enrichment opportunities our small town offers. Zoe and I are both excited about my recent find of the art studio classes. It's not your normal child's art lessons. The studio is open every afternoon and evening. The kids are encouraged to spend the beginning of the session doing whatever they want. Then they have a two or three projects with the artist, it is very informal - more like a round table, with ideas being passed around, time for chatting about artists, artistic styles, and seeing the world through the eyes of an artist.

The first time we went it was a slow night and there were just two boys there, they were around 10 or 11. It gave me a quiet joy for Zoe to spend time with some thoughtful artistic boys. For awhile her only experience with boys has been Chase, and War with Spears at homeschool park day.

At Math Center Zoe works our with other girls and women. And I am happy for that. I really appreciate her seeing for herself that woman can be good at and enjoy math. She doesn't experience any of the peer pressure or taunting she might experience at a traditional school for being a "math geek" because, at Math Center, being a Math Geek is super cool.

I think there are even more females that males at Math Center, so the boys and men Zoe does interact with, don't see her as a strange beast, a lone female in a man's world. So it is good for them too.

And I think it is good for the teachers and tutors to see this pretty little eight year old girl be the best in her age group (ages 8 - 11). Because I think they underestimated her at first, she didn't look the part.

The art instruction looks good, the math projects at Math Center are good, but the social aspects, the less tangible lessons that Zoe is learning, are teaching her very important things as well.

I will write more later. This post is already getting long.

enRICHment

Today we watched our first episode of the Professor Carol Music History program. I thought it was really good. The whole family discussed topics, even hours after we watched it. I think that's a good sign. :)

Z also dropped in on a two hour art class at an art studio this evening. She made five pictures and discussed, informally, Escher and Dali with the teacher and other students. Zoe wants to make it a weekly thing.

We are thinking of having her take a break from gymnastics and try dance again, specifically ballet and tap. This studio has a performing group that dances at festivals, for charity and sporting events and retirement homes and hospitals. I think that Zoe would really like it. We shall see.

Today there was also:

Math - Life of Fred
Language Arts - Caesar's Vocabulary
History - Making a timeline of the Jamestown settlement in Xtimeline.com
Science -Read about how the eye works
Reading - Little Women
Lightning Literature - all her homework for Chapters one and 2 of the Christmas Carol

Math Presentation

Yesterday Zoe had her math presentation at the math center. She made a poster and did a speech on a binary calculator she made. The yellow poster is hers. She did a really good job on her speech. She didn't have it memorized this year but she told me after that she "strayed from the script because she wanted to sound more natural." *grin*




Zoe's poster had a lot of writing on it.



Here is a close up of a part in her own handwriting



Some of the kids who had worked on a community project presented their findings. One of the older kids is thinking about continuing their research on making a viable and fair three sided cylindrical die and publishing the findings.

The community project was really cool! Zoe worked with adult mathematicians in the community, learned what a conjecture was, learned proper methodology for testing their conjectures, and more.

We love Math Center!

Yesterday was a busy day. Besides the presentation Zoe also sang with her Sunday School class at a retirement home (I don't have pictures because I wasn't there.) She also had a birthday party to go to. She left the house at 9:30 in the morning and didn't get home until 4:30! But she had a lot of fun.

Hanukkah

We are having a very relaxing Hanukkah this year. Yesterday I took down the fall decorations and decorated our seasonal table and tree with winter decorations.

We had a nice Hanukkah dinner. We lit the menorah and the Shabbat candles and then, because Hanukkah is the festival of lights, I lit a lot more candles and we ate some of dinner by candle light.



Pere and Zoe surprised me with a Tauntaun sleeping bag. As if you needed any more evidence that I am a nerdy girl. I LOVE it!



For the first night we got Zoe a REALLY fun game called Quelf



It reminds me most of Crainium Wow! There is trivia, acting out, stunts, writing poetry, singing, etc. We had a blast playing it. Please check this game out. I highly recommend it. (Oh yeah, it has won lots of awards too.)

Pere, our Music Man, is getting an electric guitar. He picked it out today but it hasn't arrived yet. It's a Agile AL-2000 solid body electric.



Today, Saturday, we went to Woodwind and Brass. Pere looked at guitars. Zoe went into the drum room and rocked out. Now she has asked for a drum set for her birthday in Feb. She says she doesn't want lessons, she just wants to "hit it."


For second night we got Zoe Monsterology. It is all about mythical beasts.

Right now Pere and I are enjoying a Arrogant Bastard and watching Lakers vs Utah. I made Pere turn the heat down so I can be inside my tauntaun. :)

Trivia, Newlywed Game and Karaoke

At some point, maybe our second day at sea (we were at sea 7 days out of 14,) I realized that the cruise ship was a microcosm of the world in general and that I could see, specifically, a view of giftedness.

The days we were at sea there wasn't much to do. I could only watch Zoe swim in the pool for so long. So, between eating, eating and eating we found ourselves attending almost every trivia session, most of the other games like Pictionary and Taboo, and doing Karaoke.

The trivia and games were most illustrative regarding attitudes towards gifted adults. Pere, Tante Juliet and I are all gifted and, with Zoe, the four of us formed a team together most days. Sometimes Grandmere and Grandpere or Mrs. Puff joined us.


(Mary Jo, who does the voice of Mrs. Puff on Spongebob Squarepants and acted in many tv, movie and Broadway productions, and her sister Pat were often our team mates for morning trivia)

We did not win at trivia every time. But early on, maybe our third day at sea, we won all four games played that day so we got a reputation early on. We weren't that great at trivia. Overall we only won trivia about 4 times. But we won all the other non-trivia games. We got so many prizes! We gave some away but still came home with 12 hats, 8 recyclable shopping bags, 6 canvas bags, 4 gold medals, 15 passport wallets, 9 decks of cards, and three bottles of champagne (one for having the best team name "The No-Brainers", one for Pere and I winning The Newlywed and Not So Newlywed Games and one for Pere winning the Pop Star singing contest.)

Some people treated us pretty shabbily for winning. One accused us of cheating. One argued with the Cruise Director angrily after he awarded us points and not them. Some glared. Some were a bit too happy when we didn't win.

And, most of the games we were at a disadvantage. Teams were allowed six people and usually we only had Pere, Tante Juliet and me to answer, as Zoe doesn't really know anything that we don't know.

I was bothered at first by the reactions. That was when I first started thinking about the cruise as a microcosm for the worlds attitudes towards gifted people. It was interesting to see it that way. It made me uncomfortable and Pere and I both felt like we should sit out games because when we won we often won by a lot and it was kind of embarrassing.

But then there was karaoke. Pere is a very good singer, he used to sing in an acappella group. His sister Juliet also has a very pretty soprano voice. But Zoe was the star. She sung at every karaoke - she sung The Beatles, lots of Queen, Fergie, Wham, Duran Duran, Nickleback, and once from Mary Poppins. She became really famous on the ship of 3000 people. Everyone knew her name, people clapped when she went by, they asked her to sing, everyone talked to her and complimented her. Our waiters would play with her all throughout dinner, making up riddles, drawing pictures, doing magic tricks, etc.


(Zoe and cruise director Nat)

One of the cruise directors really loved her. He would come to watch her sing even if his shift was over. He did a duet of Heart and Soul with her at the piano bar. On our last day he brought her a gift of candy and on the last night he slipped me a personal note telling me how much it meant to him that our family was on board.

(Zoe and cruise director Andrew)

Tante Juliet and Pere also got famous for singing karaoke and also getting into the finals of the on board Pop Star singing contest. Pere won with a great rendition of Little Wonders by Rob Thomas. He was fantastic!

So, what I noticed was that people loved our family for our (not my!) singing talents. And, eventually, we did get positive comments about our winning so many of the games. People said we were "so smart", "geniuses," "really in tune with each other" etc. And I started to notice that it was only a handful of people that had bad attitudes and they were all the really competitive people, who were not able to be gracious losers.

At first I let their bad attitude make me feel grumpy. But, as time went on, I saw that just as many people had complimentary things to say. I think it helped that we were good sports who always clapped loudly for our competitors and never grumbled when we lost.

I have to say there were other really smart people on board, there were two other teams that won at trivia more than we did. They knew really obscure stuff about cricket and flags. I am not a huge fan of trivia but now Zoe is addicted and she wants to have neighborhood trivia parties. :P

Zoe had a great time, of course. I didn't really appreciate the days at sea until late in the trip after we had made friends and I realized we wouldn't see them again. My favorites were our shore excursions at Costa Rica (river rafting) and in Cabo (we rented a waverunner for all three of us.)

Tuesday Homeschooling

Math - solving for X

Language Arts; Caesar's English - Impassive, obsequious, ignominy, acquiescent, and impending.

Here is a sentence she wrote using her vocabulary words.

Time, like an impassive eagle, followed, worrying and impending over us.

History - xtimeline of Jamestown

Science - reading biography of genius polymath Thomas Jefferson. This website, A Day in the Life of Thomas Jefferson, is a really interesting read.

Mommy Time - She read tongue twisters to me while I picked out her clothes for our upcoming trip.

Read Aloud - We each read four poems
I read:
Chicago by Carl Sandberg
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
excerpts from The Black Rider by Stephen Crane

Zoe read
Dirge of Love by Shakespeare
A Land Dirge by John Webster
Morning Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken
South End by Conrad Aiken

Art - Zoe did three pieces. She scribbled with chalk with her eyes closed, first with her right hand, then her left hand and then both hands at the same time. Then she looked at each piece to find a picture in the scribbles, then she outlined the pictures so we could see them. She named the pieces and described them.

We took Charlotte and Zoe to play in the woods today

Homeschooling

Zoe is really loving her Life of Fred Beginning Algebra book. She is doing really well at it too. We had a few mix-ups with multiplying a negative by a negative. But otherwise her only mistakes are those inevitable errors of carelessness. (I am assuming my child is not the only one to write down the wrong numbers or equation signs)

For Language Arts she was supposed to write an Epic Simile but ended up misunderstanding my instructions and she just wrote a poem made of several similes.

The noise we make is like a siren
blaring out across the horizon,
screaming, shouting all along,
singing out a familiar song,
like an ambulance emitting a blare,
our poor voices we did not spare.

As if we were a cattle stampede,
running about, taking no heed.
And when at last it is time to go,
We shout in unison, "Oh, please no!"
And like a horse around we run,
play on the rings, and have merry fun.

Then, as if traversing placid Rome,
the wild adventurers then go home.

For history we are studying Jamestown and I found this fun online interactive website for it. - On The Trail of Captain John Smith


Yesterday she made this model of a DNA double helix from her esciencelabs kit.


Today we were inspired by a new science book we are supplementing with, How To Be a Genius - your brain and how to train it. The title is misleading. it is not really about being a genius. It is a science book about the brain. We decided to take a detour from our Singapore Science book to read it because Zoe wants to enter into the 2010 NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS POETRY WRITING CONTEST.

Today we were inspired to paint a Network of Nerves.


Like how we are tying science to both art and poetry. ;)


For Literature Zoe is reading The Hobbit. As I read this is she is singing the dwarves song about the Misty Mountains.

She also just started Little Women. I can't wait to see how she likes it!! She was extra excited when I told her that Louisa was taught some writing by Emerson and Thoreau.

For Read Aloud time I made up a new game, each time we read poetry from a different letter of the alphabet. We choose a poem where either the first or last name of the poet or the title of the poem begins with the letter of that day. Then we take turns reading the poem we chose aloud. Today the favorite for us both was The Flesh and The Spirit by Anne Bradstreet

Now that we have finished reading Treasure Island we are watching a movie version of it. From my reading I found that a made for television version, with a young Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins and Charleston Heston as Long John Silver, was considered very good. They didn't have it on Netflix but I found what looks like the entire movie, broken up into 10 minute portions, on youtube. It is very good! Zoe doesn't know but I have Muppet Treasure Island on the way from Netflix. It is hardly like the book but who can pass up Kermit as Captain Smollet?? Not I! Or is that Not Aye!

Last week we read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and then, for fun, we listened to the Iron Maiden version of the song. I am a big Maiden fan and I have got Zoe hooked. She appreciates that they write songs a books and poems and myths and historical events. RotAM is a really long song, 13 minutes! Still that is short compared to the poem. :P

Hmmmm... what else? Well maybe another day I'll write about Japanese, her new piano teacher, gymnastics, choir, math academy, and Hebrew. This post is too long already!

Good News

We found a new piano teacher. In the small world of South Bend some meetings seem serendipitous. This fellow is known to several people that I hold in high regard musically, including a family with a profoundly gifted musical prodigy.

He seems very excited about Zoe. She had a state wide evaluation Saturday. She scored "excellent" on Theory. I don't know exactly what that means but Zoe thinks she got all of the questions on the written portion correct. She was being evaluated at Level 4, which is supposed to be for advanced 12 year old students. We are still waiting to hear how she did on the performance piece.

Her new teacher called the day of to offer her encouragement and then called the next day to see how she did. Then, today, at her lesson he gave her an extra fifteen minutes because he was so excited about what they were working on.

He has an impressive background in music and seems, not only, capable of taking Zoe to the next level in her music but also excited to do so. :)

We are still trying him out for a couple weeks before we make the decision to leave her current teacher. But my mind is pretty made up.

I feel lucky that my musically connected friends helped me find him so quickly.

Zoe pictures (and a cell)

Playing dress up with MC



Watching t.v. before choir





A model of a cell



In her new dress that she got from her Grandmere. Zoe still has her Zombie make-up on her cheeks.



Another beautiful formal dress from Grandmere for the cruise.