Friday, May 3: Shmuel comes over and swimming at school

He came down at 7:35. He told me he hadn’t turned off the fan, so I went up and did that. Then, when I was refilling his water bottle, I saw one of the jumping spiders by the sink and caught it in his bug catcher. We looked at it for a few minutes. He identified what looked like fangs, but I then figured out it was the ‘pedipalps’, so we learned about those. He then watched Smurfs.

For machines time I started to look through the Way Things Work book. We didn’t read any, but it got him talking about machines. He ended up talking about a time machine, and how he could time travel to his birthday and get cake. I pointed out that traveling to the past and taking cake would just mean that he got less cake. He then decided to travel to the future: “I can steal cakes from future mes.”

We watched a couple of Joseph’s Machines videos and made a list of some of the things he uses for his machines. I wrote them down as August watched. We then started to list things we had that we could use. We then started to think about what we could do. I pointed out the fan and he said, “Wait a second. I know what you’re talking about…” We then experimented with the fan, tying a string to it, and his bill of yarn at the end. We realized that the ball of yarn flew straight out, but that it was enough to slow down the rotational speed of the fan. August then got a plastic bag and we tried that at the end of the string. The fan went full speed, but the bag had too much air resistance and did a sort of spirally thing instead.

We next built a platform out of Legos and tied a string to it. August created a game where I was ‘Joseph’ and I was pushing a rock home and once I got it there the rock was suddenly pulled away. He thought it was hilarious and we did it over and over, calling “Pull, Joseph!” We got the drill out and tried using it to wind up the string. We were trying to figure out a good way to wind it up without having the string slip off the end or get wound around the drive rod.

We then went upstairs and made the big bed and he helped me pull the floor bed into the Zinnie room, so that Shmuel and the technician could walk on the floor. We also moved the big bed and put a chair below the AC.

Downstairs he wanted to take apart his toy from the candy stand to see how the pumps work. We managed to pry it open and see the little pumps on each time and talked about how it worked. He wanted to get the little rings out, and to do so needed to smash apart the main container. So he put on his safety glasses and put it on a brick and smashed it. He collected the rings in one of his little bottles.

Shmuel showed up and we took him upstairs and he looked at the AC. August watched him from the bed. We went downstairs and I got water out and made coffee and put out banana bread. Shmuel was great with August. He saw the emotions poster on the wall and talked to August about it, and asked August which one he thought Shmuel was. August ended up joking that he was all of them (angry, sad, happy, and something else). Shmuel said he needed a teacher like me. He also complimented August on his creations, and we talked about how August likes machines and taking things apart. Shmuel said August was lucky because you don’t get to do that kind of stuff in school. We talked about how we were homeschooling and August was playing with friends, etc. and Shmuel thought it was a good arrangement.

The technician was late. August and I started playing Hey, that’s My Fish! and Shmuel went down and watered Mikaela’s plants. He later called and said that the technician had cancelled and would try to come early next week.

We then did some GarageBand and the astronomy app. I made pizza and a smoothie. August just had smoothie. He wanted to take apart more of the iPad and he “mined” the glass, chipping off the broken pieces to get to a couple more screws and getting the smaller circuit boards.

When he went to the bathroom he asked me about building things, and he said his store had gardening machines on sale. He told me about them at length, including a powered shovel with a hinge, and a garden vacuum cleaner.

We made buildings with the magnet blocks. He delivered money as the tooth fairy, and judged the teeth as he paid out: “Nothing too exciting, one shekel…he has really good teeth, two shekels…” We were then building a big truck out of them, and seeing how high we could build it before it fell apart.

We got going, and he told me how “I set up a table and sell strawberries and stuff and that money goes to health care.” He’s making some connections there, as we were talking about insurance today and how it paid for doctor visits, etc. (we have to pay money to Shani, but I told him we’d get reimbursed) and the other day at the little mall we gave some money to a woman at a table collecting money for children with cancer. I told him it was for health care for kids that were really sick.

We drove to school, and he informed me that it was currently snowing really hard in Korea: “Snow in Korea…at this rate…44 miles of snow…” He send one of his spaceships to save the people. To see it he said, “sending out my extendo camera.”

We walked into school and dropped off money for Shani at the elementary school office. We then went to give Carly her swimsuit. She was in the middle school office and spotted us through the window. August and I headed to the pool, and were about to get in the pool when Carly got there. She thought it was going to be chilly, but it turned out the heater was back on and it was really warm. We got in and played for quite awhile. August was swimming around a lot, and his big step was doing a lot of big splashes with his hands to make bubbles that would tickle him—he also had me doing that to him a lot (I’ve told him how my uncle Dan could really do it well). There were some kids there that August knew, like Omri, but he wanted to stay at the other side with just us as they were too splashy.

When we got out we stopped by the staff lounge to see what PTA had done for staff appreciation. They had painted, put in new chairs, put in a coffee machine, and done a few other things. It was well done. Carly picked some stuff up in the office, then we headed home.

At home he watered plants and cleaned toilets to earn coins on his watch, then read The Old Truck to her. He almost has it down perfectly. He was then running round to get his 60 minutes. He played his new train game, then he and I played some Toca Store. Carly made him oatmeal, after he’d already eaten some carrots I cut up. He went back outside for his last few minutes of exercise. He was touching more invisible animals. Once he had his 60 he came in and we played the move on the game.

We read most of Hilda and the Stone Forest, then paused. We were listening to the Cure’s Disintegration and he danced to “Fascination Street”. He had more carrots, then had his oatmeal and milk. He told me “I made a way to make energy…12 iron rods, hot water, a thousand degrees EXACTLY, Sand, chemicals…”

We went upstairs to look for more U.S. coins and ended up wrestling on the bed. He found our old passport cards and played with them. He got the scale out of the bathroom and weighed himself (16.5kg) then tried to weight other things to see what would register. He then played in the sink with the little pumps from the toy he’d broken in “seriously cardboard-y water.” When I started washing him he asked, “Could you stop please? I’m doing some serious business here.”

Carly came in and got him to sleep around 9:30. We then watched the second episode of Game of Thrones.

Fan experiment 1: