He came down before 7:45. He lay on the couch, with his eyes closed part of the time and his feet on my lap, until just after 8 when he aekes, “Can I play Dragonbox Numbers?” I made him say “Good morning, Dada.”
He played a little Dragonbox Big Numbers, then asked for a strawberry and mango smoothie before having oatmeal. He paused to eat the smoothie and his oatmeal. He asked me to bring his iPad and set it up for him and did so very politely. I complimented him on how well he’s using polite language recently.
He used some psychology to get me to shake something, maybe one of his shakers, that he was using as some sort of tester: “Dada, do you love me? Well, if you do you’ll shake this and I’ll believe you.” I shook it. “Done! I believe you!”
I went up and took a shower while he played the Lego game down on the couch. He switched to the Synth One app though and was playing really loud screeching notes and giggling to himself when I got out of my shower. We discussed the presets and ‘preset’ was a word of the day.
He then taped the multimeter to the top of his shakers and the whole thing was a machine that he said made what you wanted. It was a food machine. We measured the space under his art kitchen (63w x 19h x 17d) for storage purposes, me teaching him how to record and read the measurements. He then decided to release the beetle that we caught yesterday. We did that, and left at 10:30.
We drove to Planetanya and noticed it was overrun with students. The security guard told us it was closed for a special event today, even though it is normally supposed to be open on Thursdays. He said tomorrow it would work though. August spotted a building from the car and called it a little skyscraper: “But I don’t think it touches the sky.” I asked how tall a building needs to be to be called a skyscraper. He thought about it and said, “When the top can go in the clouds.”
We then drove to Max to get some supplies for homeschooling, namely the calendar and signs I want to make. He had ‘found’ a 5 shekel piece in the car, and I told him he could choose something to buy on his own at Max. His first choice was a fancy mechanical pencil. He changed his mind though after I mentioned he could write with them, saying, “Actually, I don’t want these cuz I don’t want to write my name.” We worked our way though the art department, getting all sorts of stuff. We also got a wooden thermometer for the Zinnie house. I figured it would be good for learning Fahrenheit and Celsius, and we also ended up discussing how it works and mercury quite a bit.
We quickly paid, him buying his set of drill bits on his own. He had gone through a few choices: white out correcting tape changed to a pack of 5 toothbrushes to play with, changed to the drill bits. There were a couple other in there as well, I think. We hurried back to the car to get back before we had to pay for parking (you get a free hour in the Tiv Taam lot now). We discussed skyscrapers and building materials on the way home, getting here at 12:25. As we drove he said, “Hey! Uranus is named after a body part!…a pee body part!” It turned out he meant ‘urine’. Ha.
For lunch we made two soft-boiled eggs and he had some of the pizza. The eggs were a little too hard for him—he likes his eggs runny for dipping purposes. We were discussing homeschooling, and he said he wants to change to weekend to be Friday and Monday. I pointed out that that’s not really what people do, and he said, “Yeah, but we can do it however we want. It’s not like you’re going to go to jail. It’s not illegal.” He asked whether eggs have different sized yolks, and I said they were pretty consistent. That was another word of the day. We then discussed herbivores and carnivores: “If I was an eagle I’d love to eat a baby bird egg. I’d sneak into the nest…” He then asked, “Can we do homeschooling?”
So we went down and got a big piece of paper and I started to write down all the subjects and things he is interested in down on paper. For everyone that he said he wanted to learn about I put a star next to it. We came up with 9 things that I’m going to put up on the wall as ‘August’s Subjects’. It was things like insects, nature, machines, and electronics, and also things like art and history. He told me that one time PKB made tea and let everyone have it and he used his straw.
We then experimented with the circuit set, testing the rechargeable battery from the solar light. Confused me by having a switch connected that still works when though the circuit was complete. We finally figured it out.
The alarm on my phone, that used to remind me to go get August at school, went off. August gave me a confused look when I explained what it was, and said “I thought I woke up just a couple minutes ago.” That is, he thought it was one of our morning alarms that he’s used to hearing. I reminded him of all the things we’d done today, and that if his day felt like it had gone quickly it meant he was having fun. I then asked how his school days had felt. He replied, “School was really, really long.”
We discussed the thermometer again and discussed what would happen if it was boiling. He then invented clear steel, so he could make a thermometer that couldn’t break when the mercury got hot. He then invented a clear steel skyscraper: “They’re popular. People seem to like them, actually.” We talked about how crazy it would be to be in an invisible skyscraper, and it got pretty silly with everyone being able to see in the bathrooms and walking into invisible walls.
I asked him what subject he wanted to start with, and one of the things he had chosen was ‘photography’. So we decided to go for a photography walk.
So we went out and took the bike. He immediately went across to the cactus area and started finding things to take photos of. We talked about landscape and portrait, and I taught him how to just the focus, which was entirely new to him. He made use of it to adjust focus on plants, and also on the entrance to an ant nest.
We then walked down to the old highway area, taking some photos along the way. He decided he was done though when he saw thicker clouds and decided we should head home. His idea the whole time was to go home and then change the photos on the iPad, using the editing apps. We were doing that when Carly got home. August also remembered doing it with screenshots of the astronomy app, so he went and was looking at satellites and galaxies.
Carly got home and we showed her, then she went upstairs and he did more editing, then watched some Max and Ruby. He then saw a Marble Machine X video we haven’t seen yet, and we watched #75. He remembered the tiny screwdrivers we bought and we started looking for the rest of the iPad to take apart, but couldn’t remember where we put it. We ended up writing down our photography words that we used a lot on our walk (landscape, focus, etc.)
He found the pet cage thing with the baby still in it, from his birthday party, and filled it with other things as well and took it up to Carly. He put stuff in the cage with the baby and took it upstairs, where he played around with it with Carly. He found some coins and put them in and asked, “Is that enough to make the baby like the cage?”
I then cooked dinner, making a coconut green curry with mushrooms. I put in 1/4th of the green curry. They both found it a bit spicy, but edible. They did movie time, watching Up. I listened to the movie while I reorganized our living room and started making signs.
Eventually we ended up upstairs, and he started tying pajamas together and tying them to the bedroom door. I gave him a bath, then he was working on the clothes bridge-fence. He asked me what I made as a kid: “Stuff like engineers make? Like I make?”
I told him about Odyssey of the Mind (making a structure to hold weight), and he asked about competitions I’d been in and I told him about math competitions. He asked if I learned to make knots. I told him about Grampa’s Cub Scout books and Grest Grandpa being his scout leader. And I told him things I made in school: pinhole camera, egg drop, soda bottle rockets, fishing flies, etc.
When I mentioned paper airplanes, he wanted me to make one. We did, and he was throwing it around the bedroom. He started declaring, “That was a smooth one, ladies and gentlemen!” He eventually took it downstairs, throwing it down the stairs as he went.
We went back upstairs and got him ready for bed, and I left them at 8:50.
The food maker:
New drill bits:
Watching Up with mama:
Paper airplane throwing:
Paper airplane slo-mo:
