We had quite a good day today, as long as you ignore the horrible meeting where we were asked to voluntarily withdraw our child from school.
He came down just after 7:30. Sat on the couch for a couple minutes. I went upstairs to get our allergy medicine and back downstairs he started asking me how many parts I thought an airplane had. He told me the electric gate at school had big bolts he would show me. He went and dig in his building kit for a minute and came back with a bolt and said they were like that, with the spiral. I taught him ‘thread’.
He worked on the thing he had built with Carly several days ago. Said he needed my help, but he was okay. He said it was now a “huge solar panel that gives us electricity.” When I read him the morning message from Carly he listed and said, “Anyway, let’s finish this circuit.”
He showed me the city he had made in Hoopa City 2 last night with Carly. He had placed a lot of observatories, but called them “telescope societies.” That was too cute to correct. I worked, sitting on the floor close to him. He was talking to the game: “Ready for some roadway?” Then in a squeaky voice, “Yes, boss.”
He switched to Dragonbox Big Numbers and played while I worked next to him. I would help him with problems when he asked, and I was seeing progress in his math. he was starting to understand the process for adding two numbers that go over ten. Also progress, he decided to stay downstairs, playing the game, while I went up and took a shower.
Back downstairs he ate strawberries and had oatmeal for breakfast. We then discussed tools, and plans for the day. He didn’t want to go to Planetanaya as it is outdoors and he was afraid it would rain. Talking about tools, he said, “I’ve been inventing other electronic tools for myself, did you know that? And I’ve started to share them with other people.” And he asked, “Is there anything you want me to invent?” Yesterday I requested a flying suit for a turtle. Think we got distracted before I requested anything this time. He said, “I made a tea infuser for you…the one you had in Korea…it looks exact the same.” He meant the one with a bear at the top that I was wondering what had happened to it a few weeks ago.
He then compared his three shakers: two he had made at school, and one he had made last night out of a paper cup with nails in it which he had taped shut, then taped a pencil or something to as a handle. He described how they made different sounds. He then told me all about his vitamin C machine (he called it “Calcium C”) and how it squeezes oranges and gets all of the vitamin C without any of it being lost to the air and then you suck it out with a straw. Finally, he looked at his insect collection and speculated on why the grub wasn’t going under the dirt.
We left at 10:30, headed to Ace and other stores in that mall to mainly look for a jeweler’s set of screwdrivers. We went in the mall and looked at Bug, an electronics store. No luck. We walked the length of the mall. He had me pick him up and put his head down on my shoulder for most of it.
We then went downstairs to Ace. No luck on the screwdrivers, but he spotted a battery tester. I then showed him a multimeter, which was just a little more, and we ended up getting that. He was also excited when he spotted round pads for the chairs, as he knew I had run out of them. Finally, I found a nice latch to attach to the door of the Zinnie house to keep cats out.
We bought those, then headed to the pizza place in that mall, only to find it closed. We walked across to the other side and looked at Office Depot, but no screwdrivers there. So we went back to the car and headed over to a pizza place called Katorza just east of Winter Lake Park. We parked around the block and walked and found it. August got a slice of cheese, I had olive. We shared a grape drink. As he ate, he watched music videos on a big TV and had me Shazam a song.
We left to head to Planetanya, but when I put in the directions on Google Maps it told me it didn’t open until 4pm. So I stopped by Winter Lake Park, but August said he only wanted to go home. I relented and headed home. Later, when I explained which park it actually was, he said “Oh, I would go there.”
At home, at 1, he played 15 minutes of Dragonbox Big Numbers. We then got out the multimeter and figured out how to use it and test batteries. We had several new and old batteries, and we also went out and got the three used batteries in his bike, which was in the back of the car. He asked why it was a multimeter, and we discussed multi- (a word of the day). .he made a connection: “Like unicorn…” Where ‘uni’ means ‘one’.
We went out for a bug and graffiti walk at 2:30. He took the permanent marker with him, and I let him draw on a leaf. He drew symbols, and told me, “Only robots would understand it.” He picked it, and told me it was to go under the chair with his other things, and then he would send it to another planet.
Soapy water came out of a yard across the street and went down the road. We followed it, and were eventually floating things down it and then making dams. That was a cool development.
We headed home and got ready to go to school. We had found a solar-powered light across the street and he said that Mikaela would like to take it apart with him. We also took insects to show her. We drove to school, getting there at 3:20.
From the car he spotted a house with actual solar panels, not just the heating systems. we headed to Caryl’s classroom. She was in a meeting until 4.
In the classroom he pulled up al the window blinds, then, as we were early, we took apart the light ourselves. At 3:45 he asked how long it until Mikaela got there, and I said 15 minutes maximum. He asked what ‘maximum’ meant. I explained, then he asked why I don’t use that word more often.
Mikaela arrived, and I headed over to Mike’s office. Mike and Vicky arrived first, then Carly then Shary, as the other meetings finished up. The less said about the meeting the better. Shary (the elementary principal), in the very first communication from an administrator regarding August, basically described him as dangerous and with little chance of succeeding in a school setting. She even suggested we’d have to make “substantial” changes to our parenting style for him to ever succeed in a school setting. We sat there, shocked, as she mischaracterized everything that had been happening. In short, we were asked to withdraw August. Either all along the teachers and Vicky were sugar-coating everything, or Shary was spinning everything to pad her case that August didn’t belong at the school. Given that the psychologist warned me that Shary “doesn’t like little boys who misbehave” and forces them out of school, we’re guessing it’s the latter, or a combination of both. For example, she claimed they’d started having conversations about the students “weeks ago” about kindergarten, and were considering not allowing August to continue in kindergarten. And yet, two weeks ago we had a parent-teacher conference, much of which was reassuring us of all of the support that was given in transitioning to kindergarten, with no mention of concerns or the possibility that he wouldn’t be allowed.
In short, a good riddance of bad rubbish. While we are very upset with how it was handled, we were already really concerned with how August would respond to the kindergarten reading curriculum. They focus on it a lot, but August is already advanced in reading, and doing the typical gifted child thing of reading by memorizing full words and not by sounding out individual letters. We were also concerned about the larger class size, and with Shary being the admin directly in charge without a caring preschool director inbetween. And, of course, there was the worry of keeping him at school on a daily basis and wondering how today would go, and whether him walking around stressed out for 4 hours each day was actually good for him.
So, my first feeling was actually of a weight being lifted. We could go full in on the homeschooling and get back to a routine that still feels more natural to me (given that I did it for years with him) than getting him ready for school every day.
We went back and picked up August. It had only been 40 minutes, but they had done a lot. He had told her about how he has little people living inside him (a new story for us), and about how he has a lab and can see ultraviolet light, but other people can’t. They went for a walk and he showed her how fast he could run. He later told me they had gone to the nature reserve but couldn’t find a tortoise. They did art on the whiteboard and he drew a really complicated abstract shape, then asked her to “replicate it.” She attempted to do so, and he found her attempt really funny as she made a lot of mistakes. When I walked in, she had started to read him a book, but August later told me it was a boring book from mama’s classroom for “adults.”
We said goodbye and headed home. August and I stayed out and he helped drill holes (he’s getting better at it) for the latch and we put it on the Zinnie house. Worked really well. We were discussing foods, and making cookies for Mikayla. He suggested we had ingredients on hand, and I said basically just for sugar cookies, which I don’t really like. I explained that other cookies have more “pizzazz.” He asked what that word meant, and said that he’d heard it on Max and Ruby.
For dinner he ate a bowl of broccoli with a little butter and two soft-boiled eggs with crackers. Carly came down and he showed her the multimeter and how it works. He did something that bothered her, like kissing her neck, and when she explained she didn’t like it he said, “Sorry, I won’t do it again. I promise.” Which is the kind of positive reaction we haven’t seen from him, so that is nice. He had a bowl of oatmeal, and he said, “Hey Siri, please play Josh Ritter.” Which was a nice thing to do for Carly.
He then took Carly out, I thought to show her the latch, but another thing we had done when we were outside was use boards to block the places the cats can come in by the front gate. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before. He insisted on piling the wood high enough to close the entire gap, but that does block the gate moving. It will also be possible to leave the top row off and have the gate open and close. They got distracted and never made it to the Zinnie house. They sat on the swing and I heard him say, “If I see a really dark cloud we’ll go inside.” He was a little traumatized by our recent rain experiences. I went up Nd did and hour of work.
Carly gave him a bath and he played in the sink. I think they also added to his sculpture. He came into the office, wearing his shirt as pants and put his pajama pants on his head. He spent a few minutes looking at himself in the mirror while dancing and singing a song about Captain Underpants. We went into the bedroom and read Nick and Tesla and formally introduced homeschooling to him. He was very positive on it, as long as he got to choose things. He also liked the idea of weekly field trips. I talked about still playing with his friends, and he ended up singing a great song about Eve. He changed the subject by asking, “I have a question for you: What do you want me to make?” This time I requested a swimming suit for a bat so it could swim like a fish. He installed gills so it could breathe. For a visualization we were a worm snake, then he spent several minutes just making up music. He finally fell asleep at 9:50.
2 song and working on math:
The Calcium C machine:
Battery testing:
Symbols on a leaf:
Following the water:
Captain Underpants song:
