He woke up at 7:02. Sadly, right after Carly had walked out the door (he probably heard the door). First stop, as usual, was doing ABCDs. He also wanted to work more on Q words. He then requested a banana, so we made smoothie. He went and got his stool from the bathroom so he could help. Carly got our morning email, saying he had woken up right after she left, so she skyped from work, and talked to him for a minute as he stood at the counter. He started to ask me to spell big words, like ‘parentheses’ and ‘octothorp’ – something he would do several times through the day (others were ‘a million and two’ and other big numbers). He was also pointing to different things, like parts of the blender, and saying “This?” and expecting me to have a name for it, and, as usual, then wanting translations into Spanish.
He found the iPad and watched ABC songs for awhile. Then we skyped with my parents. He was upset when he first saw them – I think because he thought it was Mama calling again – but he soon got over it. While skyping with them, he called the table a ‘mesa’, a word that neither Carly or I has explicitly taught him (it is on one of the flash cards though, and in the Palabras book). Before leaving for class, we read the Little Bear book again and had a lot of fun with Opuestos (Opposites).
He was not happy at all about taking off his owls shirt today. When he finally calmed down and we headed over to his class we were a few minutes late. There were only two other kids there when we went in, and two more arrived even later. Much less crowded and hectic than the last session when it was 15 or so. Probably because we moved both to an earlier time slot, and suddenly the numbers drop off because more of the kids are going to daycares instead. Anyway, it was very nice, and August was entirely comfortable through the class, and even let the teacher do a forward roll once. The activities were exactly the same as the first class last session (pushing foam pieces into the plastic pigs, knocking over the foam rectangles, and making walkways out of the rectangles, but he did a really good job differentiating for the older kids:
– he encouraged August to use a fist to hit the foam pieces, instead of just pushing them in with a finger
– he encouraged him to kick down the foam pieces, instead of just pushing them
– and he put bumps in one walkway for them to step on and over, and put blocks under the other so that it made a hill for them to walk up and down
So this class session is off to a success. We saw Jihong and his mom coming in for the next session as we left. Tomorrow we all get to meet their new 5-TOUCH teacher.
We headed straight from there to the subway, and rode up to Dobongsan. Been a few months since we’ve been there to. From the station (which is above ground), August was pointing out the windows at the park and saying “Go there.” He was ready for some warm park time. We walked the other direction though, up to the stream area. We walked around the stream area, looking at the ice still in the water. That didn’t deter August, as he still wanted me to let him down and into the water. Kept saying “Walk in the wawa…more wawa…etc.” We walked up to the park entrance and sat on the same bench as last time and ate lunch. He immediately started watching the magpies around, and joking that there were “Magpies on the kitty cats” (on his pants). We started with our sandwich and then I laid out the rest of the foods we had on the bench. He surprised me by quickly naming them all off in Spanish: queso de hebra, fresa, ova, and espaguetis (noodles). He walked off after a bit and I followed – he wanted to walk into the circular area covered with trees to look at the magpies on the ground. So we went in there for a little while, then headed back to our bench area and got sticks. He sand his plural letters song and then we wrote words in the dirt. Mainly Q words. He is definitely reading ‘queen’ and spelling ‘quack’. Still working on ‘quick’ and ‘quiet’, although I think he was also spelling ‘quiet’ regularly by the end of the day.
We went up and changed him in the bathroom with the broken door. As we left, I was pushing it closed and there was still a couple inch gap. This bothered him, and he said “Close it…little bit…pequeño.” Went to a bench and put him in the backpack. He was looking out past the fence at a more wooded place and said “go in here…go in trees.” So we set off hiking a bit, down by the stream, then across it and up the hill to the first temple. He fell asleep and I turned around and walked down to the coffee shop by our stream area. I’ve been wanting to go there since first starting our stream routine, but back then I just wanted to stay outside.
It is called Cafe 553 and really nice – unlike most coffee shops it had a lot of plants, and big windows that let in light. The music was an odd mix. At first it was the Kingston Trio version of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”, which I liked. But then it switched to Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You” (which played in another coffee shop just a couple days ago). Then other annoying modern pop before going back to Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pass”.
Anyway, he slept from 12:55 to 2. When he woke up, he wanted to get going. So we left and walked down the stream to the river, then across and over to the subway station and headed home to Hague. As we were walking from there he was singing his “1978” song, which is just that number repeated over and over. We were looking for a sushi place behind Home Plus that Carly had heard about. As we walked around, he asked me to spell random words “how bout…here, Home Plus, freeze, one, million?”
We walked over to the park to have a snack, sitting on the concrete benches with animal prints on them. He really liked sitting on the bird prints, saying they were owl prints. He was having fun standing on the bench and acting goofy. He grabbed to crackers and stood up, holding one in each hand “two crackers…one at a time”, and then doing some dancing around and wagging of his head. We then got sticks and he requested we write Spanish words in the dirt – the first time he’s requested Spanish words.
We next went to the art museum, he first enjoyed looking into the closed exhibit area when a workman opened the door to it. He was really intrigued and wanted to go in (despite it being a huge empty room – guess he’s always used to it being full of art). He settled for going to the to the play area. Played in there for a few minutes, then he wanted to go see books, which I had mentioned as something to do in the museum. We didn’t make it to see the English art books, however, as up on the second floor he saw the coffee shop and he wanted to sit and play on the iPad. So I got an iced tea for me and an orange juice box for him. I showed him a new app called FreeSpeech and we spent the next half hour making crazy sentences, both grammatically correct and incorrect. A couple of my favorites:
– What will our messy baby think about?
– What does she think because ball cheese oil has about?
As he drank his orange juice, he practiced his “Ahhh, refreshing!” and once threw in a “Delicioso!” It was now getting close to 5 and I wanted to go back to the sushi place. We headed out, but he wanted to play on the benches out front for a few minutes doing “Wheee!” Then headed back to the sushi place and got an order of California rolls for Carly. August initially chose to wait inside, but was then making noise, so I decided we’d wait outside. This made him more upset, and he started grabbing the edge of the door as I tried taking him out. Got him outside, and one of the women brought him a little yogurt drink with a straw in it. It may have been that she was already about to give it to him and he saw it over my shoulder, and
the reason he got so upset was that I was taking him from it.
That made him happy, and a few minutes later she brought out the sushi. We started walking (him walking as well), but within a few seconds he wanted the sushi in the bag. I told him it had to wait until we got home, and he didn’t like that idea. He ran back to the sushi place and wanted to go back inside again. Full meltdown, including flopping on the ground and screaming and a lot of pointing back to the sushi place and saying “That way, etc.” ensued from this point, and lasted until we got to the light at Home Plus.
At home he shared the sushi with Carly. We then spent some time in on the reading area in the parlor with Carly, showing her the new Dr. Seuss app (we got the full collection) and the sentence building app. We read Opuestos again as Carly took a shower, then played with Duplos. He was practicing his Hangeul vowel construction. Seriously. At some point he actually said “Bed time” and walked into the bedroom. There, we read the Happy Birthday book. He is close to having the little Audition Day script in the back memorized (“Can you sing?” “Yes, I can.” “Can you dance?” “Yes, I can.” Can you cook?” (No, I can’t…but I can eat very well.” “Of course you can.” “Yum yum”). He was then ready to nurse and went to sleep about 8:45.
New words/phrases: canciones del ABCs, apps de dada (dada’s apps on the iPad), mesa (table), mochila (backpack)
Teuni Teuni:
Dobongsan. The stream:
Lunch:
Back in Hagye:
Art museum:
One of the crazy sentences:
Waiting at the sushi place and saying “Aaaah!”:
Sushi with mama:
