I had my book group meeting during the night. We were discussing Richard Power’s The Overstory. The whole group in attendance, and a good discussion, so we went a little long, then I stayed up talking to Peter Breysse about his poetry recommendations, and then to Peter White about other things. Finally headed to bed sometime around 4:15, after only getting an hour and a half of sleep before the meeting.
August was up just before 8. I went back to bed and got up as they were finishing their iPad time. August then watched the two Smarter Every Day tattoo videos again. When he was done he asked about how much I like watermelon etc. again, trying to drive me crazy. Carly was then trying to get him to go outside. He ended up playing with the magnet blocks instead, and asked, “I want to know more about the Palestinian war.” Carly did a great job explaining and when she got to the conflict part asked, “Can’t they just compromise?”
After a while I went and did magnet blocks with him. He then played the keyboard and we did the Bar and Bullies game (where she chases them off). He was then playing with the synthesizer app that he likes, and asking for my help to save his favorite synth settings when he found a sound he liked. He then introduced a new girl to the Brother and Sister game. She was moving into the neighborhood and had a bunch of instruments and electronic equipment. She played synthesizers, and they named her Synth. We were talking about catching up on the Marble Machine videos, but he ended up just playing music.
Carly was making a shopping list, and found packets of seaweed in the cupboard and asked how he felt about it nowadays. He was excited about it, but instantly asked how old it was: “How long? I need to know the expiration date. I’m worried about health.”
Carly was getting ready to go. They were going to take his bike to the Netanya waterfront and go to their usual cafe. He was singing as he made magnet blocks: “Everybody counterpoint.” He started playing music on the iPad and I made the mistake of suggesting he could take the iPad with him to play music in the car. This was a mistake because a.) Carly didn’t want to carry it and b.) August decided he had to take the keyboard in the car. While they figured that out Carly told me to go ahead and go upstairs to start working. They stayed until he was done playing music. At one point he came up so I could help him save a sound he had made.
They left about 12:30 and were back in three hours. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the best of trips. They mainly stayed at the cafe the whole time and Carly didn’t get to walk around. And he had a meltdown when he dropped his lollipop somewhere.
When they got back he was playing in his fort and playing music, so I kept working for a while. He came up to have me save another song. Eventually, he did his alone time, then we played Minecraft when I came back down. When we were done we watched a Smarter Every Day video about music on and oscilloscopehttps://youtu.be/4gibcRfp4zA
Oscilloscope was a word of the day and August loved it, and now wants one.
Carly headed to the store, and August had a Bar and Brother game where she was making music with math. At one point he had her say, “It’s math you should have learned in school.” Which is what one of the guys says in the video. She was making everyone’s ideas for music, then he had Brother’s class go on a field trip to see the music. We decided their new teacher (after Ms. Nice) was Ms. Squeakyshoes, who was very nice, but then threatened Bar with Rezzock the Destroyer of Worlds (from The Last Kids on Earth). I was falling asleep as we played, and eventually got up to make dinner, of fish sticks and rice and broccoli.
August went to music and saved more sounds and made a song of the day. Carly got home and he ate, and Carly went upstairs to talk to her mom. He played music while I found a book to read on Hoopla. I checked out Lumberjanes, Volume One and The Graveyard Book graphic novel and we found Lumberjanes pretty funny and read the whole thing.
In not wanting to fill his own water bottle Carly discovered he could drink with his hands. He then had a game where he was earning drops of water by doing tasks that Carly gave him, like making interesting things out of magnet blocks.
Then he agreed to put the keys back in the piano. I helped him by asking questions, but he did all the work. We started to read The Graveyard Book at some point, and read a couple of chapters of that.
Carly gave him a bath and washed his hair and I put him to sleep. We listened to a Circle Rounds, I think either “Rusty Cowbell” and/or “Maya’s Feathers”, which we’ve listened to very recently but I don’t see listed elsewhere. I put on a couple meditations, but he was fighting sleep, and finally fell asleep about 10:30.
His new synth sound:
Humming and magnet blocks:
New sounds 2:
Sound machine invention:
Song of the day with a new sound:
