He called down a bit before 7:30. I went up and we got in bed for about twenty minutes before we went down. He was a bit stuffy. Downstairs he sat on the couch and told me how he had discovered that the moon was speeding up the earth until in billions of years day and night would happen every few seconds. I read the second question, about throwing a baseball at 90% the speed of light, from What If? Hé then referenced the video about how fast you can hit a golf ball (Smarter Every Day?) and said he used a particle accelerator instead.
We then move to Minecraft. “I’m scared to the brim of lava.” It was hard for him to stop, as he just wanted to keep teleporting and see where he ended up. He played piano, and we watched the Odd Quartet video on making scales. I then made posters to hang above his toy piano to show the formulas for major and minor scales. He was being a difficult student though, and not listening very well. He refused to believe me that there are just twelve major scales. He tried to make an analogy to biology and chemistry, where a few types of elements or cells make millions of different things. Anyway, I did also introduce the idea of pentatonic scales as he wanted scales that didn’t have 7 notes. So pentatonic was a word of the day.
He played with his synth and at one point said, “I mess around with synthesizers… I’m a synthesist.” I did laundry and sewed up a whole in the pocket of a pair of pants. He made rubber band instruments again. Talked to the Grandma and the Grandpa of the Brother and Sister family. They were telling him crazy stories of the past, and the Grandpa didn’t like his music, but the Grandma did. He then came and practiced a little sewing.
He would have done more but Gilad was then ready for Minecraft and they played in the Greek world. I got to explain the Colossus of Rhodes and a couple of things to him, and remind him several times that it was a Greek world and not Roman.
While they were playing I made a lunch of baked salmon, my own version of the rice and peas dish from school, and chocolate milk. August came to the table and ate as he played with Gilad. Gilad left, and August started teleporting to high heights in Minecraft and letting himself fall. When his battery was getting low and he was falling from a million blocks up I let him leave it on, but he kept sneaking more time. I sorted through all of the extra books we had, along with some that Carly had done, and we have five bags to donate to the library book swap. I put them all in the car and took two into the library later. He also listened to some
When we got ready to go, at 2:30, it had been raining on and off. Pretty good now though. At school he told me about his design for a helicopter that could hold ten people. He had me ordering machines from his lab. We went to the library for a while and he did some art on one of the computers. It was Friday, so the library closed at 3, but I’d forgotten it was a half day with teacher in-service in the afternoon (should have taken Eve and Zoe today, if they were free). Anyway, we saw Maya and Ben in the library, then when the bell rang I went to check out the Lumberjane books but realized the librarians already had their computers off so I didn’t worry about it.
We went to find Carly. Her room was locked, so we went back and hung out in front of the library, in the chairs. I read from What If? We kept seeing people: Tessa, Mandy, and then Jeff on the walk to Carly’s room. August kept asking who they were. He actually recognized Mandy right away but asked “Are you Mandy?” And she threw him off by initially saying no.
We went to Carly’s room when she was back from her meeting. She had a bag of oranges we had bought from GAIA that we needed to take home. He spun in her chair, then drew on the whiteboard, making a game of scribbling over the work on her laptop.
We got home and he went inside quickly before it could start raining. Pretty good timing, as about 15 minutes later it started pouring. He wanted to show Carly how he was falling from millions of blocks. She eventually agreed to that, and they looked at that for a minute. He settled down to the piano and played for a good long time, then asked for his iPad time. He and I played in the Greek mythology world.
We got him mac and cheese and carrot for dinner, but he barely touched it. He is now sick of broccoli, having had it a lot recently. Instead, he did a lot more piano playing. Carly asked about the sings with the Ws and Hs on them, but he didn’t want to tell her. We spent a lot of time discussing scales though, and he eventually was trying to make the major and minor scales on his own and was starting to figure it out. He then wanted to both do the modes and was explaining how they are circular, and I said we’d get to that, and find some other sort of scale to learn. We settled on the blues scales, and I’ll do those next, along with the pentatonic scales.
He got distracted on something else though, and eventually asked for his educational videos. He watched the two Kurzgesagt videos on the size of animals. He then painted (mixed colors) with Carly and had apple and peanut butter. When he needed to use the bathroom he said he was going to make a color called “Total Brown” and then came up with the name “Linear Light” He then asked how long it would take for a slug to reach the edge of the Milky Way. No idea how to answer that one, really.
He spent some time on the graphing calculator, and actually figured a couple of things out. I got our Apples to Apples and we played together. He actually chose to play, although then it became clear he had to win every round. One time the category was ‘rich’ and he chose broccoli and argued, “Broccoli is RICH IN NUTRIENTS.” When we were done we were cleaning up and I said, “I lost the lid.” He replied, “Yep. You totally lost the game man.” Not what I meant.
We went upstairs. He fought a bath but Carly eventually got him in. We continued the pretend Sister and Brother playing Apples to Apples game. In bed we listened to a Circle Round he chose, put on some music, and he was asleep around 10.
Dramatic progression:
Zinnie show: falling in Minecraft:
Zinnie show: falling from even higher:
Two scales:
Pixels on the library computers:
Writing on mama’s work on the smart board:
Arguing for fun, with a backwards shirt:
