Friday, January 31: Tel Aviv, math time, and Sports Marathon

During the night I realized that August’s light was in. I got up and realized he had turned sideways on his bed and hit the switch by his bed with his foot. Then, about 7:40 he called me up. He had knocked the lamp off with his foot. While I got that out of the way he crawled under the blanket, head first. I closed the blinds on one of the windows and covered his legs with a blanket and eft the room. He fell back to sleep until 8:10. This time, he was right side up on the bed, but had the blanket over his head. He cuddled like that for a few minutes.

I had just placed an Amazon order, with things for homeschool, like a book on drawing, microscope slide supplies, and the game Tiddly Winks. I need to do an order of stuff to make musical instruments too. As I explained all the things we were doing today he was rather amazed, and commented on how we were doing all of that in 7 hours. He then said, “I know how digital zoom works.” Like a cloth and you stretch it apart to see the threads better, and that’s the pixels.”

We went downstairs and played Minecraft in our original creative world. He ate oatmeal and watched Bright Side educational videos. Brinicles was a word of the day.

He played a lot of piano, in particular practicing and playing with the metronome, then we got going to Tel Aviv. We started with music on the way, then switched to Story Pirates. We made it to the place where we got the piano and Eran gave us the broken piece (even smaller a chunk of it than I thought, but it is something). We had just parked in the building parking lot and I called him and he came down.

So August and I hopped back in the car and drove down to southern downtown Tel Aviv. The parking lot I planned to use was full, but I found one a couple blocks to the north. We walked south and found the Men Tenten Ramen Bar, which Jonathan had told me about last night. It was now just after 12 (when they opened) and August was starved. We got a bowl of ramen with chicken. August really liked it, and ate the half of an egg in it, and while he thought it was odd that he was eating bamboo ate almost all of that as well. We read some of What If? and they gave him a free coloring book and pack of markers, which we didn’t use. We then ordered the black sesame ice cream. He liked it. He talked about it not being the best, but that it was interesting. We talked about the whole thing being a food/cultural experience and how he would now remember those (ramen, bamboo, and black sesame ice cream) flavors.

On the walk south from the car he had been stopping and looking at some of the jewelry stores. There was one that had interesting machines in the front. I had thought they were more than just jewelry-related machines. On the way back we stopped and looked in it. No oscilloscopes, but still interesting. We saw little anvils and other tools that he liked looking at, and realized that the microscopes and other things up front were for jewelers and we discussed them.

We then walked into the art market. He wandered a couple blocks, looking at things. I’m getting the sense that people are a little touchier at their art markets here, as he was told not to touch (something rather unconcerning, at that) at least once and when I had been here with my parents there was a woman that took exception to me taking a photo including her booth even though my mom was buying from her at the moment.

Anyway, we turned around and headed back south, and stopped to watch the marimba player, then a piano player. We gave each of them 5 shekels. On the way back to the car there was an older woman playing accordion. Also good, but a couple blocks from where she could actually make some money. I’m guessing there’s some sort of permit needed for playing in the market area. We also gave her 5 shekels, although it was a busy, uncomfortable sidewalk so we didn’t stay long to watch.

We made it back to the car and listened to more stories on our way north. We parked and walked into the school a little before 3. We dropped the last bag of books to donate off at the library, then went and met Carly. The next bit of excitement having a math session with Anna, the middle school math teacher. However, when we went down there were still students in there at 3. So we waited outside for a few minutes. A couple of Carly’s students were out on the grass with the guinea pigs and let August pet one of them. Then, August spotted the math mural. He got really excited over it, and kept repeating things like, “I love mathematical formulas!” as he read off things on it and kissed it and asked questions about it. He spent a good 10 or 15 minutes on it.

There was still one student still taking a test, so we sat at a bench and read a couple of the chapters in What If? Bandwidth was another word of the day, as was sneakernet. Anna came out and started talking math with him, then the student was done and we went inside and they got to it, with his graphing calculator app out. Integral and summation were new words as she explained the symbols he asked about.

That was really good, but time was short, as she needed to go watch her daughter play hockey in the Sports Marathon. We walked over with her, asking about how Desmos uses factorial (!) in its graphs along the way. She was puzzled by the behavior as well.

Over at the gym August and I saw Taya outside and said hi to her and family. Inside we went in and saw ping pong being played and discussed the foosball table. He remembers Thatcher being really good at the beach house. He watched hockey through the glass window, looking down on the gym, for several minutes until Carly showed up. There was a concessions table, and I thought they were going to have popcorn, but oddly they were putting things away, so August had a bar from my backpack.

I was thinking that Carly had to supervise now and so we were going to go down and watch. But it turned out her supervision wasn’t until 6, so she was ready to go home. So we got going.

At home he did alone time, then Minecraft. I made fresh roasted cauliflower, schnitzel, and the last of the sweet potato patties for dinner. We ate, then he played music and did graphing. Carly headed to school.

He did his second alone time, then we played Minecraft. We then started with the Earmaster app, which Minke had suggested. He did really well with the intervals. The rhythm matching was harder for him, but their system was a bit frustrating as well (it only plays the rhythm once, then you immediately have to copy it—no listening to it multiple times, then starting a count in when you are ready).

We moved to the blocks from Shani and he was giving me challenges, like to make a bridge, or to make a square on the ground. For that one I talked about the footprint of a building, which was a new concept to him.

He hadn’t eaten his cauliflower, so I said I had a proposition for him. After explaining the word to him he agreed to eat all of his cauliflower, which he did in short order, and we then had chocolate milk. I figured out how to pop the key covers off the piano keys, so we were doing that as Carly got home. He was identifying which keys would get stuck, and I was taking them off. By the end of it there were about a dozen missing. Looks uglier, but one important step in making it play better.

Carly got home, then gave him a bath. They were doing circle math (like circumference and area) in the bathroom. I did the dishes. In his bedroom we Skyped with my parents, telling them about his piano lesson and the piano. August was trying to hit the limit for how long typed messages could be (he remembered Vivian hitting the limit) and we managed it. He was trying to make lag or crash it. Luckily, neither of those did it. He went to the bathroom and as we got ready to go to bed he told me, “Criminals shouldn’t have to go to jail. They should just have to give back the he stuff they stole.” And, “I watched a video about how it’s hard to re-enter society.” I had seen him watching that (a Bright Side, I think) earlier.

We listened to a meditation, put on music, and he was asleep at 10:45.

Playing with the metronome: