Good amount of thunder in the early morning. It didn’t wake August up, but when I checked on him when I got up his head was near the foot of the bed.
I woke him up at 8. He took several minutes to wake up. Downstairs I read all of Zeus: King of the Gods, a short graphic novel that was a really good intro to the titans and olympians and Zeus. August then wanted to be Zeus in Minecraft. We found the skin, but he actually decided to be a sea monster instead.
Afterwards we watched a Ted-Ed video about third eyelids. Vestigial was a word of the day. Then a National Geographic video about how animals see the world, followed by a Bright Side video on why the Earth’s core is hotter than the sun. “He has two jokes already!” One more “Why smartphones are always rectangular”.
He wanted me to act like a teacher and we went and discussed our day.
He did some graphing calculator. He can set up a spiral equation on his own and saved a couple of equations he discovered. He moved to the chalkboard and wrote a couple equations and showed what they would look like for the “class.”
He moved to his piano and we worked on his composition. I realized I had been making the transposition overly difficult by leaving out a rest. It was hard to get him to focus on math, as he kept playing the piano. He then accidentally tipped it over with his knee again. Finally, got him focused on the end of first grade math. For math equations we talked about how any symbol can be a variable, and he decided to call it “Mr. Stickypants” At one point, August randomly said an answer had a point in it, then announced, “This just in, a magic decimal is taking over human calculators.” We almost finished first grade math—there’s just one addition activity that needs a little work.
He was going to play keyboard for alone time but then switched to the anatomy app and got away with it. Told him he couldn’t spend the next alone time looking at a screen. I exercised. We then played the Minecraft Greek mythology.
He ate a grape yogurt, and we played a Brother meeting Millie game. It was May again as Sample’s month-fixing machine had broken. I made more of the frozen pizza things for his lunch and we did more Mille games. He then played more piano. It was getting frustrating trying to get him ready to leave the house. The assembly for the end of the author visit was 2:25. August was still in pajamas.
We had heard a couple minutes of hard rain, then it stopped. By the time I forced him to stop playing piano though it had started raining again, but not hard. August had just mentioned something about wanting to go somewhere where it hails a lot and when we went outside we discovered that the hard rain hadn’t been rain, but actually hail. He was brave and went out in the yard to pick up some hail. He got more as we went to the car and we talked a little about the science of hail and how it was more likely to hail here than in Korea.
He had been brave going out in the rain then, but when we got to school he didn’t want me to park anywhere but up in the bus lanes, which I couldn’t do this early. I did go into the parking lot and find a space. I told him I wouldn’t force him out of the car, but we could sit there a few minutes and go in when he agreed to it. Luckily, the rain lessened and after a couple minutes he said we could go in.
We walked into the auditorium right as Ilana was introducing the visiting author. We chose seats, and then there was a fifth grade play about King Solomon and the hoopoe birds and how they got their head feathers. August really liked that, and it was a lot easier to understand than the Peter Pan play. Still don’t know why Peter Pan was so difficult.
We stayed while the author discussed his visit and showed the photos he had taken of birds, both on the field trip to Tel Aviv and around the campus. August liked that, and pointed out some birds he recognized, and places around campus. We left when they were handing out gifts and thank yous, and headed to the library.
He did art on the computer, then we found a big bean bag we hadn’t seen before on the checkered carpet. We read a couple Elephant and Piggie books (There is a Bird on Your Head! and Elephants Cannot Dance!) and a picture book about a mathematician called Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain (scoff and equality were words of the day). He then did some graphing calculator on my phone, since he’d been reminded of math, before we read the classic Miss Nelson Is Missing. He also randomly asked, “How do you spell cosine?”
Carly found us and then went to do a few more minutes of work. We wandered around the library and I saw the books in French and found Where the Wild Things Are and a Roald Dahl book. Carly came back and we got going. She discussed play dough recipes with Liz and found out that Liz has a huge container of cream of tarter so she’s going to give us some. I checked out those books and Mouse Tales and Days with Frog and Toad, and another I Can Read! book called Sid the Science Kid: Earth Day Fun.
As we walked out to the car he was joking with Carly and said, “I used mathematics and pun-itation.” We were home around 4:40. He showed Carly graphs. He ate some rice dish and we did a Brother game where he meets a girl who is a mathematician named Calculator. He did alone time, building a new fort behind the chair and then just cuddling under a blanket on the couch.
Carly had looked through old books and got several to donate to the gan she’s taking her students to on Friday. They included the pop-up Wheels on the Bus, Alphabet Book, Little Miss Muffet, One Two Buckle My Shoe, Jack and Jill, But Not the Hippopotamus, Tickle, and maybe a couple others (Sophie the Giraffe?). We decided to keep the One Two… and Jack and Jill. She then went to the store to get ingredients and I didn’t realize she was also going to school so took the books there before I took a photo.
August had a fuller dinner now, having the sweet potato dish and the leftover pizza things from lunch. We watched Bright Side’s “All You Have to Do to Stay Safe in a Hurricane” and “Do This and You’ll Have a Photographic Memory”. We then played with Legos, doing physics challenges. That is, built a bridge and he would drop things on it. At one point, when it was strong, he said, tricked me. That’s impressive.”
After Carly was back I went upstairs to work. When I came down he was reading the Sid the Science Kid book to her, using the paper cutout trick. He was doing pretty well when I saw it, but she later said he was reading quite fast after that. He said he it was hard, but he could do it.
She gave him a bath, then I went in at 9:15. We got his Cheerios. He talked about someone’s water bottle at preschool overflowing because of pressure and we discussed how that would happen. We read the What If? chapter about floating up at a constant rate. He asked why ears pop and we read https://www.childrensmuseum.org/blog/why-do-my-ears-pop-when-im-in-an-airplane. He requested more Cheerios.
We listened to Circle Round’s “The Woman in the Moon”, then an Insight Timer meditation. August told me something about being able to pick the earth up, then something bout building something. A robot I think. We listened to the Dissonance album and he was finally asleep by 10:45.
Making a spiral equation:
Drawing graphs in chalk:
Feeling the hail:
Reading with the paper:
