He called to me once during the night. I went in, and, thinking it was close to my alarm going off, just took my covers with me. Turned out it was only 4, and I fell back to sleep on the lower bed. He then slept until 7:35. He took a few minutes on the upstairs couch, then we read The Biggest Bear downstairs. It is a Caldecott winner from the 50s. It was a fun one to read and discuss with August.
We then did Minecraft. We started a world in a mesa biome after trying out the Animals world I had bought. Afterwards he had cereal and strawberries and did some satellite work on graphing calculator. He had one of the little cinnamon pastries, then had a Brother game where he gets a cinnamon pastry and it turns out he is allergic to cinnamon. That was followed by stories of him drinking a lot and having to pee, then we did the new moving-to-the-jungle storyline again.
For reading time we tried out the Hooked on Phonics app and did a trail. We were trying to find the right level for him. The first three were too easy. But fad was a word of the day. We got off Hooked on Phonics when he wanted us to make lists of words and type them instead. We typed words in Pages, then he did some satellite work before we got back to typing words. We worked on CK and TR sounds.
More brother needing to pee games. He was blocking the “pee passageway.” He brought up “Towny town” from earlier. The name of the town they lived in. August thought that hilarious and dissolved in laughter again.
We got back to words with ABC songs from when he was a little kid. I was looking for the Preschool Prep videos for the sounds we were practicing, but got sidetracked on this. He asked for the tongue twister song:https://youtu.be/NDlFtdOKPlA
He remembered he hadn’t had his educational video, so watched a Brave Wilderness, then Kurzgesagt videos on Marijuana and Emergence. He really liked the one on emergence and used it as an analogy a couple times later in the day. He asked me for estimates on how many days we’ve been alive: I figured him over 2000, me close to 18000.
On the scientific calculator I then taught him how to use the “% of” button. He then got into YouTube mode and wanted to make videos to teach other people. He was talking about mathematical chains. He started heading to the bathroom at one point and I stopped recording. He then wanted me to record him talking as he sat on the toilet and said, “You know we won’t put this on YouTube,” We then did his whole number chains videos, where he talked about number chains like 10, 100, 1000, etc. When we were done he started to do more exercise on the red chair: “Now I’ll get back to exercising. What? You should always exercise after a video.”
We were then going to read, and he told me he had figured out the passcode on the iPad and asked to try it. He had. He read a level 3 book in Rivet called Fun in the Park. We talked more about math patterns, then had soup for lunch. He then had a Jolly Rancher. I was joking about being tempted by it and trying to lick it. That somehow led to a discussion of birds eating, and he wanted to see how baby birds eat so we watched a video of baby birds being fed. Then watched an illusions video that Carly had sent:https://youtu.be/DkVOIJAaWO0
He had a Brother and Sister game where Millie and Brother are birds. Millie the baby, Brother the dada bird. She wanted to do it for her research; he didn’t want to, but played along when she turned him into a bird.
For alone time he did painting outside, alone, at the table. He was then singing a song that went, “I was walking in the park one day…taken by surprise by a couple or nice guys…” He was playing around the yard and said, “Mama’s flip flops is not good for going up slides” He was shocked to see the salad green seeds popping up: “It’s only been a couple days and they’re popping up!”
We then were doing Brother and Myna Minecraft games. August was having tons of fun and laughing like crazy as he got to act outraged by the things Brother did, like filling up her base with chickens and blowing it up.
We headed to school around 4. Carly was headed home, but waited so she could see us. We were going to go to the library, but then saw Omri’s sister Bar. She told August that Omri was playing down at the playground. We went down there. August was a little confused and said that Bar looked different. I realized that he was thinking of Omri’s other sister, Zohar.
Down at the preschool playground we found Omri and Jonathan. Omri actually never played with us. She was busy with something on the car, and August went to the big swing and we played on that with Jonathan. He was being pretty crazy and dangerous. August kept talking about how he was being brave. They left. August was playing with the teeter totter and used different items to find its balancing point. He talked about doing a video on broken chains and said, “I’m in active mode.”
We headed to the library and returned (finally) the I’m No Good at Rhyming book. He found where they’ve attached Lego plates to the wall and we played with Legos. I found the second Last Kids on Earth book and two poetry books: Perlutsky’s A Pizza the Size of the Sun and Dahl’s Vile Verses. He wanted an Elephant and Piggie book and we read Waiting Is Not Easy. He found it hilarious but didn’t want to check it out.
We headed home. He said hi to Carly, then we did his broken chains video. He called 10×10, 100×100, 10,000×10,000… “an interesting ladder…” because of the doubling of the zeroes. Rungs was a word of the day.
He then read to Carly in Rivet. She taught him the ing and th sounds and wrote down words. I started making cards for all of the sounds we were learning. He played Monster Physics for a while and made a challenge for me, where I had to protect a monster from falling bombs. First I simply placed the monster to the side of where they were falling. Then, when he insisted it be under the bombs I solved the problem. He would then add to it and I’d work to solve it again. I think we got through a couple rounds.
We listened to Parcebel’s Canon in D as it had been used in a Story Pirates story. He told me, “Here’s a kidding tricks I got from Arizona, another one of my friends…” The trick was, when offered a choice, to always pick the highest option.
I had also been cutting out more of the poems that Carly had copied for me from the Rhyming book. August used my scraps and made a big paper chain from them. He sang, “nothing can stop me from taping this puppy.” He then did painting with Carly. He was still negative about her hair and when Carly asked him to get the painting he said, “You mean Really Bad Never Going to Get in an Art Place Lady Bird Johnson?” And, “Here’s Lady Bird Fluffy Face.” They painted and he mixed colors. He then wanted to duplicate a color he had made previously and they worked to do that.
Carly went up to take a shower. She had had to turn on the water heaters as it was cloudy all day. The first day we had to do that. He kept working on color mixing alone. He experimented with whether the order you mix colors matters and told me, “Mama’s art teacher said that the order matters (when mixing colors) and I’m going to see if she’s right.” He decided it didn’t.
He made a potion at the sink, then got upset when I didn’t make popcorn right away. He calmed down really well though, coming to me to and letting me comfort him, and took breaths when I asked him to. We talked about how he could do breaths earlier next time to calm down more quickly.
I made popcorn, then went for a run. When I got back he was having cereal and strawberries. I took a shower. Carly got him ready and brushed his teeth. She was getting frustrated when he wouldn’t agree to brush his teeth. I heard him tell her how I would tell him to take breaths. I’m not sure if he intended the breaths to be for Carly to calm her down, or for him to calm down and accept the toothbrushing. They got through it one way or another. She then read more of their latest Myna book to him. He heard dusk and asked what it meant.
Got him in bed at 9:30. We read some of the Perlusky poems. He is really into them now. He was more indifferent when we checked them out a year or two ago. We then read a few Roald Dahl poems. He asked if stink bugs are real so we looked up photos. Finally, we read and did some of the yoga in the Babar Yoga book. Again, interesting to see him much more into a book we’ve had for years. In app we listened to the Train to Dreamland sleep visualization. He argued with it in a couple points, about things he was taking more literally, which is like how he’s pointed out how a couple of things in one of the breathing visualizations are scientifically accurate.
Explaining math chains to me: https://youtu.be/9LcdSoRhNfg
Planning his YouTube video:
Episode 1: Number chains:
Singing about paint color mixing:
Laughing hysterically about chickens:
Having fun being outraged about the chickens:
Explaining how going on the swing operated the pumps in his lab when he was in preschool:
Episode 2: broken chains:
Episode 2: another example of broken chains:
