I woke up at 7. He was cuddled against me, so I let him sleep as I figured he’d wake up when I got up. He had used me as a pillow and done a lot of cuddling with me during the night. He was up about 7:20. He had me carry him downstairs. He and Carly then read the Unexpected Love Story of Alfred Fiddleduckling and The Book of Mistakes. He played TodoMath, then the Insects app.
Carly made a mango smoothie. We drank that, then August wanted to watch how gumballs are made. He watched that on the iPad. I took a shower. They did a chili powder experiment and boiled that and he was watching other how it’s made videos.
We Skyped with my parents. We were discussing fairs and they mentioned scones. August said we had had scones in Pennsylvania and that Tia Cassie had made them, but he didn’t like the baked strawberries in them.
August really wanter to do an experiment with an apple, burning it somehow, but after Skype he got involved with searching for random places on Google Maps after I looked up Nada Lake, where Paul had just gone hiking. For all sorts of places he kept saying things like “Its so beautiful there…I can see things up so close…”
We went to make our zucchini corn bread. I handed August the zucchini Carly had gotten at the store and he noticed it rattled inside. He asked me to write it down as an anthropology note: “zucchini has pit. It was shaky.” Turned out it wasn’t a zucchini at all, but a kind of avocado. We decided to substitute carrot instead and make carrot cornbread. He helped for awhile. When he was hungry he stood at the counter and ate a bunch of cold broccoli and tofu. He asked for the dinner he hadn’t eaten last night. I thought he meant the soup so I heated some for him. When he saw it he laughed and said he meant the other stuff – the rice with tofu and broccoli. He ate that, then helped a little more with bread.
He and Carly then started doing a wrecking ball science experiment off of mysteryscience.com, which Stephanie had told us about. They had a lot of fun with that. At one point he started acting out doing a science experiment in school, telling Carly “Teacher, I think I would need to set up a science experiment.” He explained a wrecking ball and said it could be used to knock down houses to stop a fire. He was remembering the Magic Tree House book and the San Francisco fire. He then explained, “A country made a wall…But the people changed their mind and knocked down the wall.” That was from the video they had watched and referred to East Germany. From their experiments and videos the words of the day were ‘occupy’ (as in use a building), demonstrate (as in show how something is used).
He then took photos with my camera. When the cornbread was done Carly had also cooked corn so he had both of those. We then got ready to go. We discussed decibels after he asked for the bolt thing (He had Carly store it up in the lamp thing) to hit the swing with. He guessed the car engine was 60db. We left at 2, headed to the pool.
At school, Carly headed to her classroom to drop off the work she’d graded. August and I walked to the pool. We saw Omri and her parents and talked to them for a few minutes. We got to the pool and Carly arrived. We all played in the pool. Mandy and two of the girls showed up and August and I went to the deep end so he could say “Nuby” to them.
We were home by 4. I went up and worked as he watched The Pink Panther. When I came down for tea they had the number line out and he showed me how to build a two story school, using the chalkboard, after we cleaned the eraser outside. They then went for a photography walk. He came up to show me his photos when they got back. He also told me that thousands of years ago a guy was nailed to a wall. It is a mention of Jesus in a Skybrary video about Jerusalem that he’s watched a few times.
Back downstairs and outside with Carly. She had hidden easter eggs for him at one point as well. They came back up at 7 to start his bath. He had said thumbs down about school tomorrow and that he was afraid or worried. But when she asked him about what he said, “Nevermind, it’s good” to avoid talking about
When I was done I came down to take him up for his bath. He told me, “All this work you’re doing, it’s like nonsense to me…I understand ‘We’re in a park’ but I don’t understand hundreds or thousands of words.” Which I thought was a pretty impressive explanation. I talked about how he does understand thousands of words at a time when we read the chapter books, and that he could understand what I was working on if we read it in bits.
He played in the bath a good amount of time then August and I went back downstairs and he had some more smoothie. And we started reading Magic Tree House #28 again. He wanted to tell a story through dance, so he danced on the couch. Said it was a nonsense story.
I went for a run. When I came back they were reading in bed. Left them 8:50 and he was asleep at 9.
Fun with time-lapse:
Finding beautiful things on Google Maps:
The wrecking ball:
Running his experiment during math class:
Pool time:
Explaining a two-story school:
Telling a story through dance:
