Happy Chinese New Year!

Today we went to the Los Angeles Zoo where they had a Chinese New Year Celebration. We listened to music, saw traditional dances and an acrobat.




Z had a good time playing in the area.


The koala's were out


my obligatory "artsy" shot


awww, look at that punim


The male orangatan's hand next to Z's

sick

So today I am sick

So I laid around a bit but then for some reason I decided to go through all Z's clothes and fold them and iron the ones that needed ironing. Then I irons some of my clothes and Pere's clothes. Oh yeah and I did four loads of laundry...

what is that all about?!

my Z

I usually don't think of Z as being her age, which is six now. I also don't really think of her as being gifted. I just think of her as being "my Z" - she seems "normal" to me.

But sometimes she does something to remind me that she is "only five" (actually six now) and I think she is so cute at that moment. I think when I can see her that way I am also remembering myself and how I felt at that age and it was so magical and life seemed so different than I know it to be now.

And sometimes I am reminded that she is gifted and to some extent profoundly so.

(I have to qualify this by acknowledging that many of my friends reading this blog have children who are more advanced than Z so the things that amaze me might not seem to amazing to them. ) But recently Z seems so darn smart! I am very happy with what she is doing in math and very proud of her knowledge base in science. I am sometimes just struck with wonderment about how well she plays the piano. Her sense of humor seems especially advanced these days and often I feel like I am talking to a preteen rather than a girl who would be in kindergarten.

Most of the times though she is "just Z" to me.

EPGY, How do I love thee

let me count the ways 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,4,4,8

Z is really exceeding my expectations with the program. Today it was teaching her how to find the perimeter and the area of a shape. With perimeter she was adding the four sides and to find the area she was multiplying two numbers. But on one of the perimeter problems the shape was very complicated and the number were the ones I wrote above and she said "so eight times three..."

I was really proud of her for using multiplication to make the problem easier. This was one of the first times I have seen her do that except with Fives or Tens or Hundreds.

It was SOOOO hard for me to learn my times tables. I was still struggling with it in fifth grade! (I do have them down now though *wink*) So I was so impressed that she beginning to use multiplication on her own and she only just turned six!

******

She also had a very good day at her two classes.

In Japanese she and she teacher did a voice over exercise for the movie Totoro. Z memorized many (10+) lines in Japanese very quickly. Her teacher was like "wow!"

Voice is moving along very fast. Today her teacher mentioned a recital.

On her first class with this teacher Z was given three songs to learn for the next week - Once Upon a Dream from Sleeping Beauty, and When you Wish Upon and Star and Give A Little Whistle from Pinocchio.

The second week she was given a 3 page song - Cruella De Vil

The third week she was given another three pages song - Honey Bun from South Pacific

Today she was given two more new songs. So in four weeks she will have built up a repretoire of seven songs. Z and I really love all these songs and often end up singing them together around the house or in the car. :)

*******

Tuesday was Z's turn to teach her at her science class.

She was SO excited. The day before she made up many songs about how excited she was and about how it was going to be the best day of her life. (So yeah she wasn't really missing the whole acting thing)

She brought her rock collection (which she has almost doubled during her birthday) and taught the kids about rocks and minerals. She also taught the kids how to identify different stones and about "luster", "cleavage", "tenacity" and other terms. She also told them interesting historical facts about the pieces in her collection - like Greeks thought that amethysts would protect against drunkedness.

Happy Valentine's Day

We don't normally do Valentines but this year it fell on our homeschooling group's park day so they had arranged to have all the kids give Valentines. But since 86 kids signed up to do the exchange most ended up doing them by family instead of each individual kid, but Z still ended up with around 50 cards!

She LOVED handing out her cards. We lined up all the kids boxes or decorated bags and then the kids made a line and gave them out. Z wanted to go through the line a couple times and give away all the extras we had made. :)

The kids had a great time






And some of the adults got into it






When Z got home she looked at all her Valentines.

Booked Out

Okay I did it.

I called Z's agency and told them that Z will be taking a break (booked out) until April.

The lady I spoke to sounded taken aback when I told her the length of time but she said "We understand."

*whew!*

I was really stressing about having to do this but now it is done and I am so much better.

I think it still hasn't really hit me that life is back to normal now. But I think that when it does it is going to feel real good.

Fast asleep

Last night when I went to check on Z before I went to sleep I found her fast asleep with her face still in a book.



What a kid *smile*

Star Wars exhibit

They had some cool robots


Here Z programmed her own robot


a picture from the outside


Z in front of Luke's land speeder, the actual one from the movie


THE Thermal detonator


Blurry pic of Z with yoda


Chewie


a Wampa! grrrr

Canadian experiences

Today was another of our favorite free events, the World City concerts at the Disney Concert Hall. Today we saw some Inuit singers and storytellers and then a group that performed Canadian dances.



Here are some picture I took at the Concert Hall




Lastly Z and her little friend A.

Konnichiwa

Yesterday Z and I were hanging about in a Japanese part of town and we stopped at a crepe place for a snack. It was just a little stall with tables and chairs outside. The maker of the crepes was this cool Japanese guy from Tokyo (with leather pants!) It was cold and he brought us out red blankets for our laps. Isn't that nice?

Z was talking to him Japanese. She introduced herself and told him how much she liked the crepes and said Thank You all in Japanese. He was tickled by it. :)

Z's Japanese lessons are going very well. She still needs more practice on her hiragana. She can read it but can't always write it so that has been her homework recently.

She still wants to learn more languages. She says she wants to learn Spanish, French, Hebrew, Latin, and Chinese. *Oh Boy!* Well at least she dropped Russian off the list.

A Break

I wasn't sure about posting this yet but it is on my mind and I want to share it with my friends.


Late last week, after the photo shoot, Z told me that she wants to take a break from professional acting.

When I asked her why she said that she just wants her regular life back. She said she really doesn't want to miss any of her regular classes. She also says she wants more time to play (she mentioned that sometimes she misses playdates) and to do her "regular stuff."

At that point I figured that maybe she just didn't like the photo shoot so I said let's give it a couple weeks and see.

Well now it has been one week and she says that she still want to take a break. She says she wants a couple months off. When I asked her if she would rather just not do it at all anymore she was adamant that she does want to go back to acting (but I am not sure.)

I am going to give it one or two more weeks and then I am going to talk to her agent about her taking a break. I am nervous about this because I think they are pretty happy with Z right now and I will be taking a potential money maker away. They recently sent her on a movie audition and then there was the Nickelodeon thing yesterday...

I feel a little less nervous than when I told her piano teacher I wanted Z to not practice so much and not to do the Bach compettion though, so um... I guess that is a good thing.

Anyway, Zoe could change her mind tomorrow so now is probably not the time you should respond with "Great! I think that child acting is horrible!" *grin*

TGIF

It has been another long week.

One one hand she only had two auditions this week (including breakfasting with some people Nickelodeon this morning) but we are still driving Pere to work and picking him up in the evening. This has been going on for three weeks now (his car is finally being worked on though) and I decided tonight it is really worth $45 a day for me not to have to spend almost 4 hours on the road everyday.

Homeschooling has been going great. I love every resource that we are using now. EPGY is great and that science book I quoted in an earlier post is excellent. Z is loving both of them.

We finally moved in Middle Ages for history a couple weeks ago and we are doing intergrating it with vocabulary. Some of her words have been cathedral, monastery, crusade, merchant, and feudal.

She got Inkheart for her birthday and she has been reading that and is also almost finished with The Half-Blood Prince.

I also recommed the BBC for some fun grammar and spelling games.

Her behavior has been great. I love it when she is easy going and in good spirits.

Some pictures

Earlier this week I watched Z's Shakspeare class.

Here is her group warming up.


She is laughing because she has to hug this boy.



In this scene she has been thrown to the floor and is getting "kicked" in the stomach.


Here she is at astronaut training class taking some pictures of rainforests in South American and Africa with the EarthKAM and sending them to the ISS.

a shiny sink

You know what makes me happy? A shiny sink. Clean white counter tops. Vaccum lines on the carpet. An empty laundry hamper.

When did I turn into a "housewife?" I am not quite sure. Perhaps it was moving in with Pere, or having a baby or maybe it was FlyLady. *grin*

Or maybe it began earlier. Perhaps it was the inevitable outcome of my childhood facination with notebooks with matching pencils and color coded homework plans. And a junior high school girl who fantasized about owning matching bras and panties for each day of the week might naturally grow into a woman who is tickled pink by a shiny sink.

I admit that I don't like things messy. There has been a lot of "messy" in my life, maybe too much. Right now there are a lot of things that are out of my control - like where Pere is going to work and where we are going to live and if our cars are going to run and if my daughter is going to get another job and what am I doing with my own life...

Cleaning gives an immediate satisfaction. I can make it "just so" and there it is. And yes that kitchen counter will get bread crumbs on it again first thing tomorrow morning, but right now it is clean and white. It is in the state it is meant to be in and I made it that way. That is a good feeling.

Conflicted

I feel as a mother my job is to raise Z to be a good person and after that to support her to be who she is meant to be.

But who is she meant to be??

I just wish I knew what to do to support her. I am not a big fan of the whole acting thing and if it petered out I would be okay with that. My own little wish for her would be for her to have a career in science or (a field I was interested in) criminal justice.

But what if performing is her thing? What if her life is going to be this life that really scares the heck out of me? I guess I would need to find a way to be positive about it and make it work for me.

I do have these misgivings though and yet I don't really trust my gut because it has been wrong before.

At this point I am trying to keep her well-rounded and give her a lot of opportunities to discover different interests. She is being problematic with that because she is liking pretty much everything. ;S

She has had this list of things she wants to be (mommy, doctor, astronaut, actor, singer, and princess) and right now it looks like she can be one of them. But I don't want that one thing to take over her life so much that the other things or any other things become less of a possibility, KWIM?

I probably shouldn't be worrying about this for a six year old.

Star Struck

Oh My God! I almost forgot to tell you.

Today I was driving through Westwood and I looked over at the car next to me and guess who was sitting in it???

Harrison Ford!! HARRISON Ford!! Harrison FORD !! HARRISON FORD!! Eeeek!

I was in the passanger seat and he was to my right, Right Next To Me! I kept my cool and didn't do a dance in my seat until we pulled forward and he got into our lane right behind us.

Then I told Z that Indiana Jones and Han Solo was driving the the car behind us.

She freaked out too but I think she was mostly excited since I was now doing the car seat dance and some whooping. :) You have to understand that I feel in love with Han Solo when I was only Z's age and he was my favorite actor for the last 25 years. And when I am asked I still say that Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie.

Anyway at the next light Z turned around in her car seat and waved at him and He Waved Back! and Smiled!

I wailed to Pere 'I want him to smile at me!!" but no, you have to be a little girl to get away with waving at a star in his car.

EPGY

Z started EPGYmath on the 1st. She liked it so much she did four exercises on the first day. She liked it so much that this Saturday she choose doing EPGY math over watching cartoons. She likes it so much that she asked to do it first thing this morning.

They started her on Kindergarten work but now she is doing third grade stuff and going through it pretty quickly. I am wondering if she will stay at third grade for a whole year or progress more quickly.Personally I love it. I feel like it is a more intense math education that she was getting from other workbooks.

Birthday Party

Z and 19 friends went to the gymnasium for her birthday party yesterday.

Her princess jewelry

Make a wish

Happy Birthday Girl!

Today is my little girl's 6th birthday.

Tomorrow is her birthday party but today we let her open presents from us and from my Mere and two friends who sent their presents.


King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from Pere and Me


New Lakers Jersey wth Kobe's new number from Pere


Midsummer Night's Dream Paperdolls


A fairy bookmark my Mere made.


Close up on the book mark


My mother also made this handmade Fairy Book for Z. Check it out it is so beautiful!











Some good friends added to Z's rock collection.


And her big present from Mere and Pere - Dance Dance Revolution for our Playstation.

We also got herEco-Fluxx

I found an awesome science book

For 5 cents at the library I bought this work book It is called Following Direction - Using Science as a Theme. It is actually supposed to be teaching students to follow written directions. But I think the science is wonderful! It is a little hard for Z because it is for 7th and 8th grade. But I love that she is actually having to think and figure stuff out.

Here is one of the pages.

Which Animals Should Be Saved?

Each year nearly 10,000 species of animals become extinct. It is people who are largely responsible for causing the extinction.

1. Many species are threatened with extinction because people destroy wetlands, tropical rainforests, coral reefs and other natural areas. Label each of these areas. this was easy

2. In the empty box, draw a threatened animals that lives near your home. She went on the internet and researched this and came up with baleen whales (which include blue whales) then she drew a picture of one.

3.Scientists predict that 20 percent of Earth's species will become extinct in the next few decades. If nearly 10,000 become extinct each yaer, how many species is hat over two decades? Write your answer next to the title. She knew what a decade was and she was able to do the multiplication.

4. List some reasons why species face extinction to the right of the poster above. She wrote that they are losing their habitats.

5. Even though humans are the biggest threat to some species, they are also their greatest hope for survival. This is kind of like the saying, "Best friend and worst enemy." Write a sentence relating this phrase to your life under the title. She wrote about acting and how she loves it but it also keeps her from taking her regular classes.

6. Some scientists use triage to decide which of the thousands of endangered species to try to save. Explain this word in relation to threatened animals need to be saved more than others on the back of this page. She looked up the word triage and then wrote "First you should work on the close to extinct animals. Then work on the ones that are a little less endangered. You should keep spreading the help out." - she was able to talk about it more but didn't get to write it all down because we had to go somewhere.

7. List some ways to help you decide which animals need to be saved more than others on the back of this page. - She wrote "Use triage."

8 On the sign above, make an advertisement to save a particular animals. - she made one for a panda

9. Circle the word on this page that means prognosticate. I told her basically what a prognosis is and she found the word "Predict."

10. Wildlife conservationists realize that it takes the help of all people to preserve the life forms on Earth and to prevent species from becoming extinct. Write on the back of this page some things you could do to help protect the animals of Earth. She wrote "Use less paper. Recycle wood from old houses to make new houses. Eat less meat."

end of a series - Photo Shoot

Today Z had her first photo shoot.

At first I thought the photo shoot was going to be more fun (for me) than shooting the commercial. It takes about 50 - 70 people to shoot a commercial so when you are doing it inside a house it seems like anywhere you stand you are in danger of being bonked on the head with some lighting equipment.

But there were only about a dozen people involved in this photo shoot (Z and her fake mom, the photographer, the hairdresser, the wardrobe, the gopher guy and six producer types.) It was much more low-key at first but then it just kept going on and on...

So anyway this is how it goes:

There is this tiny little white closet (seriously a tiny closet) with three sides. The back is a green screen. In the front there is a hole than can slide up and down that the photographer puts his camera in.

Z and her fake mom go inside the box and sit on other boxes (actually more like crates.)

Hovering just outside the box are the hairdresser and the wardrobe lady. The hairdresser is actually needed. The photographer might call out "Hair!" and she has to slip into the room and spray and spritz.

Then there is the computer guy at the large screen computer displaying all the pictures that are being taken with only a few second delay. All the producers stand around the computer and "ooh" and "ahhh" and make suggestions like "Tell the mom her head needs to go more to the right." and "We would like Z to smile more."

The photographer is talking the whole time:
"Mmmm great",
"Yeah, great".
"Yeah, more like that",
"Move your hand to the right",
"Your right",
"More",
"More",
"Less"
"Yeah, right there."
"Z, smile more."
"Smile like you love your fake Mommy."
"Smile a little kitty smile." (What the hell is that supposed to mean?!?)
"Look into the camera."
"Touch your ears together" (Z and her fake mom, not both of Z's ears to each other.)

So this goes on for half an hour. Then we take a break. Then another half hour.

Now I am starting to wonder if Z's lack of a fake smile is messing up the shoot. Seriously though she doesn't really do fake smile well. She also doesn't really like having her picture taken for an hour and a half.

She was glad when it was over and the thing she enjoyed the most was playing ping-pong during the breaks.