Zorah's Drawing Today

Zorah wanted to draw her version of a goddess, she said. So she pulled out a pen and some paper, and this is what she came up with.

Note To Self

When a child comes up to you crying about something, do they want to be told what they should have done? Do they want to be told to be more careful? Or do they just want to be held and comforted. Which one would you want? Act accordingly.

Random Thought

An extra sharp chef's or paring knife is essential in the kitchen because with them you are able to cut onions so fast that you don't have a chance to get the fumes in your eyes. I hadn't thought about it before because I usually wear contacts, so I have eye shields, I guess. But this morning I cut them with my glasses on and just began to feel a sting when I finished cutting.

Useless information? Maybe. Definitely if you don't cook.

Sunset Park

Today was park day with Las Vegas Lifelearners, our unschooling group. For some reason, though, most of the group has shunned this park, at least for the past two meetings here. I like it. It has wide open spaces where the kids can run, with shade trees, and a playground with a real climbing rock, not one of those pussy rock climbing walls (joking).

Zorah really likes one boy in the group in particular. They have played well together each time that they have seen each other. Anyway, his little sister found a plastic, smiley-face, heart-shaped pendant on the ground. She played with it for a while then set it on our picnic table. Zorah found it, and the girl's mother let her have it. She showed it to her friend, who claimed it as his own because Zorah told him that his sister had found it.

Of course Z was upset. The other kids tried to tell him to give it back to her, so he ran with it to his mom, crying now himself. When she told him to give it to Zorah, he was upset to the point of screaming. Zorah held the heart in her hands and listened to him sobbing for a few seconds. Then she looked at him, got up from my lap, walked over to him, and handed him the heart. She said she saw how sad he was and didn't want him to be sad anymore. I could have cried.

The kids played for a while longer, then we went to feed the ducks. Since they were all getting a bit touchy (can you say naptime?), we headed home after that.

Cactus Wren Park

Tuesdays are our days with the Henderson Homeschoolers, as I think I have previously mentioned. Anyway, today we were at Cactus Wren Park. Apparently, there are myriad parks in Vegas built by housing developers adjacent to their cookie cutter neighborhoods. Wouldn't necessarily want to live in one, but they do have playgrounds.

Today was Mardi Gras, I assume, because we had Mardi Gras crafts. The kids were given masks to color with markers. The adults were given 3D masks to paint. Personally, I thought the kids should be able to paint the masks too, but I can understand to a certain extent the aversion to paint mess. Kristina also brought crowns. If you want to see pictures of our finished masks, leave a comment.

After Zorah and I were done with our crafts, she called me over to her for help with these monkey bar type things on the playground. She was afraid to fall off and wanted me to spot her. When she hung from them, she really wasn't that far from the ground. So I told her to drop, but that I would catch her so she could fall slowly, just to see how far it was. After doing that three times, she realized that she has jumped from much higher places and dropped down by herself.

Then she tried to make it to the next ring, got stuck, and dropped.

Then she tried to make it to the next ring again, succeeded, etc.

Part of my thing is trying to avoid putting any pressure on a child to succeed or to behave a certain way, but sometimes I can't help it, whether positive or negative. We live and learn. I think that as long as praise or criticism is genuine and specific, it is valuable, though you have to make sure there is a balance between the two. I couldn't help being proud of her and letting her know so. And she is so damned cute. When she says: "That was so breathtaking! I did not believe I could even do that!" Seriously.

A New Medium for Zorah's Art

RV tables are shaky, and if you rock them too much, the bases for the removal legs can easily. So lately we replaced the table that came with our RV to a folding card table from Wal-Mart.

For some reason, this new table has boosted Zorah's already high interest in drawing. Anyway, this morning while I was doing email, she found the chopstick which I use sometimes to light our oven. Anyway, she started dragging it across the calendar taped to the fridge and discovered that she could write with it! When she pointed it out to me, I told her that people had been using charcoal to draw for thousands of years, even in early cave paintings. She really liked that idea and came to me a while later with this:

Unfortunately, since it was the end of the chopstick charcoal, the drawing itself was quite faint, and it got rumpled. I'm afraid to put it through the scanner. It's a palm tree on a desert island, with the sun shining down.

Books From Our Last Library Trip

Nate the Great Goes Down In The Dumps by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Nate the Great Talks Turkey by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Nate the Great and the Mushy Valentine by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Nate the Great and the Monster Mess by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Nate the Great and the Pillowcase by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Nate the Great, San Francisco Detective by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
The Bone Series by Jeff Smith
The Wing Shop by Elvira Woodruff
Bamboo by Paul Yee
Dance at Grandpa's by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Deer in the Wood by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The 3 Bears and Goldilocks by Margaret Willey
The Old Woman Who Loved To Read by John Winch
The Pigeon Wants A Puppy by Mo Willems
Yoko Writes Her Name by Rosemary Wells
The Paper Dragonfly by Mary Watson

Zorah especially loved these three:



Library Lil by Suzanne Williams

Rude Giants by Audrey Wood

The Boy Who Grew Flowers by Jennifer Wojtowicz

Castle Logix

For Christmas this year we got this really cool building game called Castle Logix. You have 7 blocks and have to put them together in specific configurations, but you have to figure out what they are. Zorah really enjoys it. I do, too, but I would rather watch her figure them out than do so myself.

With this game you can really watch her think. In this video clip, she was having a bit of trouble with one structure. I stopped the camera to help her, but she figured it out by herself. You have to love her word selection.

Park Day at Exploration Peak Park

Exploration Peak Park is really nice. It has a large, varied play area with a vaguely western theme, some hills covered in grass, and a hiking trail up the eponymous big hill/small mountain. The last time we came here, we didn't hike up the trail. At one point though, Zorah was involved in a bubble chasing collision. Needing a break from the playground, she gladly acquiesced to the ascent. It was a pretty short walk, but up at the top we had a great view. I would love to see it at night, though I don't imagine I ever will.

Zorah had a little bit of a hard time. Not so much because of the hike itself, but because of her expectations about other people's behavior. One of her friends didn't wait for her when walking up, which made her very upset. Of course, that made her sullen and angry, which made her friend keep her distance. And this, of course, upset Zorah because she wanted to be with her friend despite appearances.

I tried to explain that people aren't psychic, that you need to tell people how you feel or they'll never know. It was hard for her to accept it, and hard for her to let go of her resentment. I guess that's true of most people. What I wonder is how to achieve emotional stability. I don't really think you can teach it. I guess it just comes with experience, which is why I love these playgroups so much.

On a lighter note, Zorah watched Wall-E again later that night. She also watched the short film Presto which is on the same DVD. She hadn't watched it before, and it absolutely cracked her up. I haven't seen her laugh this hard except when she's getting tickled, maybe not even then. I made a video of her watching the video. It's about a minute and a half of her laughing, if you care to watch. It makes me laugh.

Later Today...

Later that day, we went somewhere. Maybe the library? Anyway, the clouds were just sitting on top of the mountains. It was getting towards dusk, so I couldn't get a very good picture, but even a bad one is worth posting of this.

Painting The Roses Red

I have an old necklace I picked up at Urban Outfitters years ago. It is a chain of roses. Zorah had the idea of painting it yesterday, so today we set her up outside with the necklace and some acrylic paint. It ended up coming out pretty well. The paint does dissolve in water, but that only means she gets to paint it again, using different colors if she so chooses. Nice!

Cleaning Zorah's Room

After we got back from the party and had dinner, I decided it was finally time to clean Zorah's room. This is something I have been wanting to do for the past month, but haven't made time to accomplish. I haven't been making her tidy, as I think I have mentioned before, because it's her space. Since it was starting to bother me, I asked her if she would mind if I cleaned it up. She didn't have a problem, so I got to work cleaning and organizing. As I worked, Zorah got into it too. She cleaned up her desk and put things away.

Really, though, she was totally excited about sweeping. She kept asking when we would get to that part of the cleaning. I explained that to sweep, we first had to put away everything that was on the floor. She helped put it all away so she could get to the broom.

Look how happy as she makes up that pile of dirt!

I think that most of the time it's not that kids don't want to clean their rooms, but perhaps that they don't know how to begin. Looking at a huge scattering of playtime detritus must be rather overwhelming. I have a feeling that if I help her clean up enough times, or even just demonstrate, she will be able to do it more naturally. So many things that we think are obvious, having done them so many times in our own lives, are not. Not to a child. Anyway, we were both quite pleased with the results.

Valentine's Day Party!

Today we went to the Tuesday homeschooling group's Valentine's Day party. It was going to be at the park, but due to a chance of rain, the group moderator held it at her house. I wasn't that comfortable with the idea since we had only been at park day with this group twice. Also, for some reason most of the homeschoolers and unschoolers have boys. There are maybe two girls close to Zorah's age that we have encountered so far. Anyway, Zorah really wanted to go despite the fact that there might only be boys there, so we went.

It turned out to be a great time, so I am glad we went. We ended up being some of the last people to leave. I made sure to thank Zorah for dragging me along. :-)

There were crafts and food and friends. What more could you ask for? Maybe Zorah squeezed into a toddler car? Well, we had that too.

Impromptu Editing For Content

Today after dinner I started singing "The Grand Old Duke of York" in a silly voice and Zorah and I got to singing silly versions of the song. I think it started when Zorah sang it this way:

The grand old Duke of York,
He had 10000 men.
He marched them up the hill
And marched them down again.
And when you’re up you’re up,
And when you’re down you’re down,
And when you’re neither up nor down,
Your neither up nor down!

I sang that he had 10000 hens, bok bok!

So Zorah sang it this way.

The grand old duke of york
He had 10000 dragons,
He marched them all up the hill
And then they burned him!
He was killed.

When Brian shouted Hey! From the bedroom, she said:

"Actually, they just electrocuted him, but he was fine after that. Heh."

Chinese New Year Celebration

Today was the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce's Chinese New Year Celebration. It was kind of cold and overcast, but we figured we would check it out anyway. It ended up being more of a flea market with some performances from various Asian cultures. Taiko drummers, Polynesian dancers, a Chinese opera singer, and lion dancers, whose costumes are shown below.

I didn't really get to watch these performances however. Why? Because someone in the Chamber of Commerce had the brilliant idea of having a bounce house. There is nothing better than going somewhere for a little culture with your daughter and seeing a bounce house. You know that you will be spending your time watching her jump up and down, while catching brief glimpses over your shoulder at the performances on the stage. They sounded good, and Zorah had a blast. Two of the unschooling families were there, so Zorah got to bounce with friends.

Anderson Dairy Field Trip

Today we took a tour of the Anderson Dairy here in Las Vegas. I was excited, because I was really hoping that we would get a chance to see how all the machines worked. It wasn't the dairy farm, but the dairy processing plant. The tour guide took us very briefly past windows into various processing rooms, but since it was the afternoon, all the machines were off except for the milk juggers. After seeing the rooms, we were taken into the initial tour room, where we watched a movie about the history of Las Vegas and the dairy. This would have been extremely interesting except that they mentioned ice cream over and over again during the film. To top it off, they gave ice cream to the kids at the end. I would like to go again for a morning tour where we could see the machines operating.

Park Day at Bruce Trent Park

This Wednesday was unschooling park day at Bruce Trent Park. To celebrate her son Dylan's 5th birthday, my friend Nicole brought tiedye materials along. Zorah dyed a dress of hers and a shirt for Brian. Unfortunately, we soaked the shirt and the dress after we rubberbanded them, so the dye didn't take as well as it could of. Still, it was fun.