I woke him up at 8. We went downstairs and he decided to watch educational (Life Noggin) videos and one from a new channel instead of Minecraft. A nice change. He played some piano and asked about perfect fifths. He had oatmeal and we got ready to go.
We were going at our usual just-on-time 9:10 to make it to Shani, but found his shoes full of water. Dried them quickly and got going. We had to wait a couple minutes for her anyway, so a minute late was just fine.
First they did a puzzle activity in the swing. He was kind of whiney about it. Did a couple, then needed his nose wiped. He was overly dramatic about it, and after I did it climbed up the ladder thing to hide. She got him to the table to write. He went along, but was still cranky, bumping the table with his knees, then when she asked him to stop he sat with his feet kind of up in the chair. Finally he settled in though and went along with learning how to draw an 8 in the proper fashion.
He got that pretty well, then showed her his 9s. She gave him a little story to remind him how to start at the top (like August was at the top of an apartment building, started to go down, then remembered he’d forgotten his water bottle).
He had five minutes for a picture. Agreed to wipe his hands with a scented wet wipe because he liked the smell. Did an abstract picture.
Then the new game, with moles. He didn’t like it and called it boring. In part because I don’t think he understood the strategy involved, and in part because he was tired of doing things at the table. But he told her he really liked the blocks that they had started with, and we ended up borrowing them instead.
We talked about buying wipes/scented tissues on the way home and decided to do it on the way to piano. He asked, “Why is there a flu season?” He then asked why seasons overlapped, like flu season and winter. We ended up discussing cause and effect and correlation was a word of the day.
At home we played with the blocks we borrowed, mainly building things, and he asked, “What is a chain reaction?” I made us a quesadilla. We listened to the album of recordings of 4’33” that I had found last night. August thought it was pretty amusing, and I recorded us listening to it as our own sort of version of it.
He ate some of the sweet potato things, but then said he preferred the schnitzel. He did alone time, then we played Minecraft. Had some crackers and peanut butter and played the piano. We started to get ready to go, and he spent some time sounding out major and augmented chords on the piano. We talked about why Ms. is an abbreviation, and abbreviation was a word of the day.
We drove up to town and went to the pharmacy, where we foudn the wet wipes for noses and a six-pack of lavender-scented tissues. He was happy with both of those. We then drove to Dalit’s house and found it, starting his lesson at 1. It went really well, and it was fun to see her so excited about what he could do and his understanding of music theory. She was most impressed with how he could take one of his own songs and they easily move it to another key. She taught us a couple terms, including enharmonic and parallel key.
We drove to school and I carried a bag of books to donate into the library. We saw Cassie in the cafeteria and he told her about his piano lesson. He got a muffin and I got a cappuccino. As we ate I showed him a video of someone playing piano, I think to show him hand position (one of the things she had mentioned, as he’s used to hammering on the toy piano). He was really impressed, and said, “I’m going to be a musician when I grow up!” We also watched the video for the Travis song, “Why does it always rain on me?” after I had mentioned the song a bit earlier.
We then headed to the library, where we read more of What If? Plausible was another word of the day. We then headed to the preschool playground. We saw the chickens, all grown up now, and played on the swings. He had a Brother game where Bar changes the parents’ brains so they always say yes to things.
We left at 4:15 and walked to the gym, finding Carly where she was supervising students. They looked at the trophy, then he and I went back to the library to wait for her. He ate corn crackers at the table outside. He asked how far away you can hear sound. We referred to https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/128144/how-far-can-one-hear-sound He did some math graphs, then we headed home with Carly after 5.
At home he did more graphing calculator. He asked, “What’s it mean to be a daredevil?” We had the noodle dish for dinner and watched the Mumbo Jumbo video where he tries to crash it with bees and TNT. I told August about it when he proposed doing basically the same thing on his own while we were at school. He then did alone time and then in Minecraft he worked on slowing it down with bees and TNT. For his educational video he watched the Kurzgesagt “Dissatisfaction” video. On the graphing calculator he said, “Here’s the one I’m most intrigued by,” referring to ‘uniformdistance.’
We got him upstairs and Carly gave him a bath. When I took over he had a series of questions, like “What’s dopamine?” and “What’s self esteem?” And he said, “I want to get an app that’s all about calculus…” We read the What If? chapter about neutrinos. We got the lights off and listened to the Stories Podcast story “Wexie’s Seascape”. We listened to “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind” from Klezmer Dreams as he fell asleep. He had to sit up to tell me that his favorite tree is the maple tree. Mainly, it seemed, because of the syrup. He was asleep by 10:15.
Antibody magnets:
Waa was waa and shapes:
Waka waka…:
His developing tune:
In his first piano lesson:
Laughing at the playground:
Grown chickens:
Twisting on the swing:
