He was up just after 7. Watched Berenstain Bears and then started talking about electricity as we got ready to go. He told me, “Tiny bits of electricity are the smallest things in the universe…You pass right through them but you don’t get hurt.” He then asked, “How do you measure sound?” When I talked about decibels he said, “Actually you measure it in 1 wavelength, 2 wavelength…”
We hopped on the bike and headed to school. He stopped at the spot where we had found that tomato plant last year. He talked about how maybe it used to be a garden, and told me “I found a clue…there was a plant marker. But I don’t think it’s here anymore.
Walked home and worked, then rode my bike back and picked him up. It was just August and Eve there after school, with Mini. She realized that Hector had left his backpack, so I finally convinced her I could run it up to him. August stayed there with Eve. Eve had wanted to go play on the playground with August, but we told her I didn’t have permission to pick her up.
August was doing art, using a marker to make straight lines. He asked to do art with the ruler again at home. Eve was running around and lured August out to run in circles on the grass. She got picked up, and August took scissors out and spent a long time cutting grass with the scissors. Someone walked by and joked about him saving time for the grounds people. We walked over towards the garden and he said, “I’m really finding out about nature in this playground.” He listed snails, slugs, and beetles.
He decided I should go get him a treat from the cafeteria and quickly got upset. But he calmed down and ate more of his snack as he sat on the circle swing. Kind of stuffy again. He stood up on the swing and said, “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus!” He said they didn’t have yoga today because they’re working on the floor in the everything room. He said they had literacy groups instead and that’s when they read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.
We did the place of forgetting game. We then wandered down and looked at the garden and tried some of the plants. We looked at the walking path and the curved railing they are making along it, then August wanted to play at the big playground. I went and got our stuff.
Carly showed up and we walked up to the library to return Amulet #1. As we went in the corridor to the middle of the lower level of the library building he said, “The hall of monsters.” I asked who called it that, and he said “Everybody…because it’s so dark.”
We got walking. Along the way he jumped off and grabbed a bamboo stick on the ground. He said, “My staff!” He immediately threw it down and said, “I hate it. It’s wet.”
When we got almost all the way home I realized his handle was missing. Carly headed on home and August and I turned around and retraced our steps. We didn’t have to go far, as we found it on the sidewalk on the other side of the park.
We got home. He asked me to get out the markers and paper and stencils and he was very focused on his art for quite awhile. He told Carly he wasn’t hungry because he was focusing on art. We were having spaghetti for dinner, and he was having the worms and calling them worms, and told me, “You’re going to be the little wormy and I’m gonna eat you up.”
We ate dinner, and he was quite stuffy. He was making dark jokes about eating the worms or being a dragon or something and I said ‘disturbing’ was the word of the day. He replied, “That is so NOT the word of the day.” In his best teenager voice. When he told me, “Let’s be dragons and fight and kill humans and stuff.” I told him “Go read Captain Underpants.” Carly and I had been debating whether the books I’ve been reading him about dragons, etc. or her introducing him to Captain Underpants had been a worse idea. He asked me, “I love reading Captain Underpants, don’t you?”
They read some Captain Underpants, then he went back to art. He drew a picture and told us “It’s a person getting ground up into a machine.”
On my iPad he opened Math Tango, which he hasn’t played for quite awhile, and we found there is a new half of it that is bout multiplication and division and is set on a space station. We started playing that, and it starts with teaching counting by 2s and 5s. I worked on it a little on his own, actually telling me to stop helping him. He then wanted me to play it, and he got a notebook and a marker and started writing down the lists of numbers. I was explaining my thinking on one, and he said, “Oh, you’re using the evidence.” He then said he was “Writing down the evidence.” Also, he automatically was holding the marker the ‘correct’ way. This weekend he was telling me he would hold his pen that way at school for Ms. Vicky, but at home he’d still hold it the other way. He drew a picture, and I think this time it was a person in a dungeon.
He asked me what what ‘tome’ meant. He had heard it in a book, but wasn’t sure which book. Maybe Nimona, or Amulet. He went to the bathroom and yawned on the way: “Dont worry. That wasn’t a sleepy yawn. It was just a normal yawn.” He dried his hands on me after washing his hands and said, “Thank you for being a towel.”
He did some more art: “A person walking into something…a dungeon.” He then tried getting the magnet kit out instead of going up for his bath. As Carly went to get him he took the magnetic balls and put them on his head and out his hat over them. Carly got him upstairs just fine, but then he got fussy. She got him through his bath.
When he came downstairs he asked about ice cream…we’d forgotten that had been mentioned today. I told him he needed to earn it, and he did a good job of putting away the markers and stencils and stickers. He had a small bowl of ice cream, then said good night to Carly. She said there was no way I was getting him asleep by 9. But I came close, and he probably would have gotten to sleep more easily if he wasn’t really stuffy.
We went up and read a Skybrary book (Carlos Writes His Name, I think) while he ate his Cheerios. He then went to the bathroom, then we turned on the lamp and did the dragon egg preschool story. We worked on blowing his nose, and put chapstick on his dry upper lip. Turned off the light and sang a couple songs and he managed to fall asleep.
Cutting the grass:
I’m Major Have So song:
Using the stencils:
Squeeze your finger silliness:
