He came downstairs just after 7:20. I was on the couch and Carly was outside. He stood at the entrance from the stairs and gave me a smiling, just-woke-up look for a few seconds, then came and lounged on the couch.
He played Dragonbox Big Numbers and we read a good amount of Nick and Tesla. He asked about a lot of words: steepled, airlock, meddling. We played with the circuit they had made yesterday (#95), where a bright light can override the effect of the music. ‘override’ was another word of the day. We then cut cardstock for our calendar signs together, then we decorated a bunch of bookmarks after he cut a bunch more (he and Carly had decorated several together yesterday). I would start the decorations, and he would finish them. He talked about wanting to hand them out to the preschoolers.
I made him oatmeal after he ate strawberries. He wanted me to not mix in the brown sugar, then tried to only eat the parts with the sugar in it and leave the rest of the oatmeal. I mixed up why remained though and told him he had missed some of the sugar and he ate the rest as he played a little Dragonbox Big Numbers. He was now confidently figuring out some of the problems with grouping (like 9+3) in his head. Carly came downstairs. She had been up early and had now taken a nap.
I went up and took a shower. When I came down they were making folded paper things out of strips of paper, like Carly used to make from the edges of paper from the old dot-matrix printers. I helped with paper mache flower thing – he was making a card for Mikaela. He asked how thick tissue paper was and we looked it up. I talked about the density of paper, and he asked, “What’s dense mean?”
We had crackers and cheese and meat and watched Wintergatan videos – 71 and 72. We then did some more hot gluing of things on his city. The gold hot glue was coming through now. He did an 18 minute alone time, choosing to play with his magnet kit, and had an Oreo.
He ate his Oreo, then we talked about going outside. He wanted to play a little more Dragonbox Big Numbers, so I let him, as I was working on something. He sat next to me on the couch and leaned against my right arm while I tried to type. I scooted away once, and a few seconds later he scooted over and leaned on me again.
We tried the tiny screwdrivers on the printer. No luck. Carly came down. We were getting ready to go for a walk and Carly and I changed into shorts. He didn’t. We suggested he could wear short sleeves tomorrow s it would be even warmer. He skeptically said, “Oh, I will see.”
I went up and did recycling while they sat in the yard, then we walked up into town, taking the back roads. He did the radio station thing and I sang a couple songs, including our “Juicy Juice” song. He was then singing it to himself. Our initial goal was the snakes and ladders playground. We stopped in the park area before that to look for bugs. Not much luck. Carly suggested we keep going and head over to the park with the orange trees. There, Carly sat on a swing and gave August challenges to help him find bugs. He wanted me to go with him at one point close to the corner, as there was a dog behind a fence.
He found a roly poly and then sat with Carly on the swing for a few minutes, then we got going. He’s not really into playing at playgrounds nowadays. Carly suggested we go to a coffee shop, so we walked north into town and went to the new one in the new mall. August remembered he wanted to sit in the elevated portion inside and they let us go up there. They ordered a real strawberry milkshake to share, and I got a mint lemonade. It was a little hard for August to actually share the shake, as it was so good. He sipped my lemonade and at first said he didn’t like it, but then he kept drinking more and more. He missed the memo that we weren’t going to get food and crawled under the table for a minute.
They headed home as I did the whole waiting for the check thing. I paid and caught up. On the way I found the bit of packing strap that August had found earlier. It had fallen out of the bike, so I delivered it to him. He had found it on the way to the coffee shop. He was humming a tone, then put it in his mouth. Yuck.
At home I cut more signs and we added to the city. I started rice for dinner to go with the curry. Mandy Kern and all three of her daughters arrived about 5:15. He was a little overwhelmed by the crowd, but was soon loving the attention.
We went upstairs and had a Skype consultation with Dr. Postma. That went quite well. He reassured us on homeschooling being good for August, and stressed that social interaction is best with like-minded kids, and doesn’t have to be the same age. He did that before we really raised that concern, and it goes against what pretty much everyone here has told us (psychologist, OT, preschool director, etc.) who have basically said that he of course needs to be in school and socializing with kids his own age a lot. He said gifted kids usually have 2 or so close friends. He then suggested finding interest groups and mentors. We immediately had the idea of seeing if we could hang out with the robotics team or GAIA club. And as we were discussing having all of these sessions with Postma earlier in the day, I realized that Gabby, the oldest daughter, is great with August as a mentor, taking him to the butterfly garden, teaching him about the tortoises, etc. So we are doing just fine with the social piece.
We came downstairs to find them gone. Carly texted Mandy and she said they’d be back in 15 minutes. It turns out they had gone up to the playground and played with the exercise equipment. “Mandy really doesn’t like pollution,” he told me later. They then walked over to the mall and told him he could get one treat. It was a Kinder egg. I think he now wants to collect all the toys. He had told them about his planet (which apparently has a name with a bunch of numbers in it) and that he is a robot. And he had walked the entire distance on his own. As they approached the house I heard them discussing the rain, and one of the girls said to us, “He really doesn’t like the rain.” As they left and I noted they had to walk down the street to their car, he said, “I hope they don’t get rained on.”
He would keep bringing up the rain as we ate dinner. I asked Siri if it was going to rain. She said no, but he said, “Well I think so. I felt a couple little drops.” I served the curry again but he said it was too spicy this time. He had a bowl of broccoli and rice with soy sauce and a piece of salmon instead. I asked if he wanted more, and he replied, “Okay. Just because it has a lot of fat to keep you warm.”
He ate his chocolate egg and Carly talked to her mom. We put together his toy of a Minion on a bicycle. More talk of the rain. As he went to the bathroom we discussed the differences between a laptop and iPad, and I mentioned dictating your writing. He asked what ‘dictate’ means.
I asked him what he would do if he could do anything. An idea from the Brave Learner book I’m reading. He said break things, like walls and windows. He started describing breaking the preschool, so I thought it might just be expressing frustration with school. But then he clarified he’d like to break our house apart too. Basically, he just likes to break things. So, don’t know how I can turn that into a homeschooling thing, but maybe we can see a building demolition. Also, he has talked about wanting to break concrete with a hammer several times, and was talking about sledgehammers fairly regularly for awhile.
We then hung up our whiteboards. I had thought of his as not one to hang up, but he insisted on it being part of our schooling area. So we hung it with a nail to the left of the windows. He had school ideas for it, and we got all of the magnet letters from the fridge and put them in a cup by it. I suggested I start putting a word up on the board each morning for him to read and he liked the idea. He was saying “nice” to things a lot today; a phrase he gets from me.
I was trying to call my own parents, then Carly came down with Cherie on the computer. August was busy tying a box of pushpins to the nail, but when he was done with that he started explaining everything to her, including his electronics part city. We talked about how a slug had escaped in our house, and Carly said something about all the insects in our house. August said, “I like all the bugs in our house. Peaceful.”
I took him upstairs and after some initial fighting against a bath, got his hair washed just fine, after he had chosen Mentos from the treats. August asked, “What eats bones?” So we looked it up and discussed bone decomposition.
He brushed his teeth and we got him ready for bed. I left them at 9:05. We had also read more Nick and Tesla sometime during the evening. About ¾ done.
Paper mache flowers:
On the swing with mama:
Humming and plastic in his mouth:
Explaining his city:
Tongue twisters:
