I started waking him up right at 7:30. He was really tired though. He rolled over and cuddled against me for a while. He finally got up right at 8. Downstairs we finished reading the Redwall graphic novel. He then wanted Minecraft time. We did that, and I made lunches. We got ready to go, which took some time. August played with his yarn bridge sort of thing up from the toilet paper thing to his cardboard house, humming a tune as he did so.
We got driving at 10, and parked at Ra’anana Park. We walked from there over to the big covered playground. On the walk over he told me of a maze he had made: “It’s a maze to get to the other side of death island. It takes up the whole savannah desert.” We were meeting up with people from the homeschooling group. There were just two families there today: Lauren, with her son Gilad, and Elana (the Korean woman I had talked to at the house) with her kids Sophia, Josiah, and Miciah.
The four of them were on the big swinging log thing. We did introductions, and Gilad invited August on the “ship.” August was playing on the little spinning thing though and declined. Gilad got off and came over and got on it with him. A cat was near us and Gilad called it a lion or tiger. August commented on the color of it, and they were off. They played for the next 30 minutes or so, running all over the playground, and August didn’t say a word to me once. There was talk of an airplane taking off and that was about all I caught.
We then decided to walk over to the zoo area, which Elana had never seen. But first, August was telling Gilad about his favorite things in the park, and he pointed out the big disc things that you’re supposed to be able to hear each other at. We went up there, but they found the pivoting blocks of wood in the ground that make music first and played on those for a few minutes. We then tried out the things August had pointed out but couldn’t get them to work properly. they don’t have the focus parts that tell you where to talk/listen like some do.
We then headed over to the zoo. Elana turned back after a way, as her kids, particularly the youngest, were done. We spent 20 minutes or so at the zoo. August found a couple feathers that he kept. Lauren pointed out that in Hebrew the Sika deer are called ‘Nikud deer’, as the spots on them look like the vowels in Hebrew. We also liked the degu, a small rodent. The kids noticed that all the straw was moving, and Lauren at first said it was the fan that was blowing, but then I realized actually was little insects crawling through it all as well.
Lauren was needing to get Gilad home for some math, but was persuaded by him to let them play at the playground for a while. We went over there for another ten minutes or so. It ended when August said he was ready to head home. Gilad is ten, but Lauren commented on him being a young ten, and that there is another 5-year old that he gets along well with. I would have guessed he was 8.
We headed home. August got 15 minutes of Minecraft, then figured out how to play with the water balloon thing we had just bought. He played with that while I did a short exercise. August told me that he had discovered that you could hear someone’s hertbeat really well when he was cuddling with Carly. So he cuddled with me and listened to my heartbeat when I was done.
He had pesto pasta for lunch and requested “lunch entertainment.” I read my Little Pony. He then had a Brother game where they were drawing their world with a pencil, which goes back, I think, to a Treehouse book where Andy and Terry have to redraw everything.
On the iPad we did some word time, with him reading random phrases I wrote. He was circling the words as we read them, then started drawing it all into a picture of a bug. He spent several minutes humming and drawing, and said “Now we have to do some details. It’s a robot bug.”
We got going to school and saw the kindergarteners on the way to the busses. August called out hi to several people, by name, and told me “Everyone I know I’m gonna say hi.” Which is quite a change for him. We saw Simone and his mom outside the kindergartens. A bit confusing, as we were there before 3, but no one was in Eve’s classroom. It turned out her teacher had had to go somewhere, so they were in the other kindergarten classroom. We went in and found her, then walked down and found Zoe.
Zoe is like a little adult. I saw shake hands with one of her friends as we walked away, then a little later as we walked to the playground she asked me “So how are you doing?”
We found Heather, then August was studying part of a plant, then we headed to the big playground. They played there, doing different tricks. August was standing on the swing, hanging from some ropes, and stretching across between two structures “like a hammock.”
They were all ready to go about 3:30. On the way out, Eve and August inspected a fire extinguisher outside the guardhouse and a pipe out of the ground. They all went over to the flag area to look at snails and the flagpoles, then headed to the car.
Got the three of them in the car, Zoe in the middle, and headed home. On the way, August told them he had two projects involving bubbles to do. One was colored bubbles; the other one wasn’t clear. August noticed the gate to the carport open, and he and Zoe looked at the trash. He found an old snorkel in there. He was excited about that.
In the house I mainly got them playing outside for the whole time. I brought snacks out on the table, including a bowl of popcorn. They did some soap mixtures, coloring the bubbles like August wanted, and poured them down the slide.
Carly got home, then Heather picked the girls up just after 5. Inside, we all picked up the pillows together, and Carly talked about the short meeting about seizures that she had after school. August asked what a seizure was, so a word of the day, then asked what she learned to do and wanted her to show him on him. So she did that.
He was then saying “Asmodeus!” to Carly, which was really funny. She didn’t know what it was, but it is from Redwall. He then joked to me “I want to read I want to bend a peg leg.” He ate a ton of fresh mango as Carly cut it up. She asked “Are you going to become a fruititarian?” He replied “Maybe! Maybe I’ll be a mangotarian!” And “I want to send out tons of mango ads…even to New Zealand. Even though New Zealand doesn’t exist!”
He played Minecraft with his evening time, then was a “Mango zombie!” Had quiche for dinner, then we read My Little Pony. I then went up to work. Carly gave him a bath and cut his hair. I went in to read to him before bed. We finished volume 9 of My Little Pony and read a new book I got called The Dreamer, which he quite liked. He was then doing head stands and kept himself up for a few seconds. I left them at 9:30 and went for a run.
Humming and string:
New friends at R’anana Park:
In the zoo:
Pumping up balloons:
Humming and drawing his bug:
Being a hammock:
Searching through junk:
Headstand 2:
Headstand 1:
