He was up at 7:15. Downstairs I wrapped him in the little blanket for a minute, then he wanted to play Minecraft. Made him agree to reading Earthlings after that. We then discussed what to do and he said fighting for 15 minutes (only I’m on survival), then building for 30. I grunted reluctant approval, and he said, “What? It’s better than the other way around.” We did that, but eventually he got hungry, so had cereal and spent the rest of his time watching a Minecraft video. When that was over he watched the Bright Side video on How Fluoroscopy (X-Rays) Works. When that was over he told me about his heat x-rays.
We had some time before we needed to leave for his time with Shani, so we started working on the R sound. He’d been wanting to do this because it involves using a lollipop to push his tongue around. We watched a little more about it and used the lollipop. R isn’t a big hurry, as kids don’t usually master it until they are 6, but it is similar to the L in that it is about the tongue not moving fully to where it is supposed to go, so it was good to talk about. I drew pictures for him to explain as well.
We drove up to Shani’s. He ran in excited to get started. Told her all about how he can do the L without honey, and also how the honey makes his throat itch, so he likes adding peanut butter. And he told her about practicing R.
They did the schedule. She had two activities on the schedule. He chose drawing and choice time. For choice time he drew an infinity symbol. He asked her, “What’s task mean?” A word of the day.
They started with L practice. Initial L is now easy for him, but medial ones are difficult. He got through much of a sheet of them, and we took the rest for later. Ruler was a particularly hard word.
They then moved to the swing. He did building puzzle card things with blocks. Next was his choice, and he chose to do the rings on a cone while he lay on the swing.
Finally, they did drawing with color changing markers like we have at home. They were drawing shapes and filling them in. She was reminding him that the markers are tired and need to rest.
We headed home. He unexpectedly got upset when he demanded his iPad time early. But he eventually agreed to do 15 minutes of alone time. He then had spaghetti for lunch. In talking about our plans for what we would do in Minecraft he said, “Just like Ms. Shani said, sometimes we do what she wants to do and sometimes we do what I want to do.”
As we got back on the couch to play for 30 minutes he told me, “Don’t you dare say cushion. Say pillow or else.” His tone was joking, so not sure if it really bothered him as a word. We did 30 minutes of Minecraft, exploring in the Nether. We’ve realized that I can be in survival and he can stay in creative.
We had some tuna on crackers, then did Brother and Sister games: They had another family reunion. Tons of bathrooms now, but when they got back the bathroom building was blocked by downed power lines. Grampa ended up electrocuted. The family all leaves again, but then a court order makes them try again next year, with similar results. The country ended up destroyed somehow, so while Bar worked to put it all back together the family was living in Turkey. He played Minecraft with Myna, who was in Greece, and he was learning redstone. Then he accidentally killed a couple of Myna’s friends when he was supposed to be making friends and was banned from the server.
He did his second 15 minutes of alone time. I encouraged him to do something this time, and he got out the visual dictionary. On his own he found the L section and was reading out words, lots more than just those that had pictures, and practicing his L sounds at the same time. He read a lot more words, and near the end said, “Pronunciation is key.” Which is actually a quote from Starswirl the Bearded when he gets a magic spell wrong in My Little Pony.
He told me he had had a real dream that was both Minecraft and real life. It had involved a really tiny house with a woman in it. When we moved back to the iPad for his second 30 minutes (no evening time now) he joked, “I demand more time…I just want to be like a king…I demand more magnesium…” We now journeyed back to the surface and made our way back to our house. We have been playing in our original creative world.
He watched a Joseph’s Machines video and part of a dominoes video as I got stuff ready. He then told me, at length, about a crazy machine he made for lifting up a piece of toast. It included, along with dozens of other pieces, forty-some babies put to sleep with anesthesia and 17.99 pounds of flour. It was started by a lime that knocked over a Domino.
We made banana bread. I was trying out gluten-free flours for Lauren and Gilad. We used half teff flour and half chickpea flour. In the end I wasn’t too fond of the chickpea flour in it, but August raved about how good the bread is. He also had fun licking the bowl, etc. as we went.
He was then asking questions about Rarity in My Little Pony, like whether she was so obsessed with fashion that she would steal something. I was then literally about to suggest we watch an episode when he said the same thing.
We watched an episode about Spike pet sitting all of their pets. Then we did an experiment from the MEL Chemistry Tin set. It involved running electricity though a solution with tin ions in it. Dendrite and electrolysis were new words.
The bread was done and he really liked it. He then played around with the macro lenses for the camer on my phone. He watched the Brave Wilderness executioner wasp episode. He told me that a sound in it was like his powerful powerplant starting up.
Carly got home as we were getting ready to go out for a bike ride. We stuck to the bridge and paths as it was dark. He really wanted to ride up to town though, and wants to buy lights for the bike. I told him he could go walk around town with Carly when she drove up in a bit to go to the bank and pharmacy. We rode for a mile, stopping to look at a big ant.
At home he had spaghetti. Then tried Peanut M&Ms for the first time and liked them. He gave Carly the last one. We told her about the experiment, and he said that the dendrites were “Like tons of cities bring connected by power lines.”
They left at 6:10. They went to the pharmacy and ATM, then to the fruit stand where they got strawberries and broccoli. Strawberries were a big surprise. August also noticed that they had moved the pineapples, to up high in the middle. They’d walked to the park but the library was closed.
When they got back she read some of the Myna Minecraft book while I finished some work, then he was playing music on GarageBand when I came down. He had me record tunes he was playing. We then did a silly brother games where he was Tigey and laughing a lot. Carly got him cereal. He was rhyming, and managed to rhyme Apollo with borrow.
I was going to go out for a walk (trying to be gentle on my throat to get rid of the cough) and he asked if the Apollo astronauts are still alive: “Are they alive…are they grampies?” I looked it up. Armstrong is the only one that has died. He then said, “I illustrated a book…The Man on the Moon:
The man jumps
The man digs
The man leaped
The man works
The man falls into a pit of lava and dies.”
I went for a short walk. When I got back he came up and hung out in the bathroom while I took a shower. I put the sheet on the bed, and he told me about his planned updates for Minecraft, including the “Myths and legends edition…” He said good night to Carly, and I read him A Bear Sat in My Porch Today. We noticed a lot of details in the pictures that we had missed the first time. He as grumpy that my iPad was updating and we couldn’t read from it. For my story I told him about how in Camp Fire we had taken a goat around town as a fundraiser. It was late. We listened to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals and he fell asleep quickly, by 10.
Also, a day or two ago he said we should start counting cats again. We got up to #4 on our bike ride today.
Working on R:
Browsing and reading the dictionary:
Tin dendrite experiment:
His tune 1:
His tune 2:
His tune 3:
