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.)