He got up at 7:35. We got in the couch bed and stayed there until about 8. He got up and asked, “Has the common cold ever killed anybody?” We talked about weakened immune systems and how they can lead to multiple infections and death.
We played Minecraft in our creative world. He spent the end of his time doing new seeds. I made breakfast and put on music. He watched episode 2 of the Ted-Ed “Think Like a Programmer” séries but said it wasn’t educational enough. He watched a Bright Side about the fastest human-made things, then I showed him the Numberphile channel, and we watched part of a video on interesting graphics. That made him want to graph himself, and we figured out how to make a parametric one, then how to do our first regression. Just random numbers this time, but I suggested we later use his own actual growth data.
He had oatmeal for breakfast, then spent some time copying from the sample Desmos equations: looking at them on my iPad and typing them himself on his. “I could spend a whole DAY copying complex math problems.” “Maybe you could record me.” I spotted a mistake he had made “I can’t tell the difference between ‘d’ and ‘b’.”
I made a poster of the months and hung it in the bathroom so he has something to learn when he takes a long time in there. Don’t know why I haven’t thought of that before.
He was retyping a set of equations that used “the function of X” and he realized it matched the equation he’d typed earlier. As I explained why he got it, and told me “I understand it.” He finished a line of it and said, “I’m starting to get this down! The life of a mathematician down.” He finished one last set and we moved to the piano. He was making up a tune using C minor, then I taught him to move from C minor to find the major it is in (D sharp). He talked about determining how long light would take to go around a hypothetical Minecraft world, then paused to discovered a melodic minor scale. We need to learn the different kinds of minor scales now.
He went to the bathroom, and talked about a problem calculating the weight of dirt in Minecraft. He had already declared a block to be a half meter square, so when he was confused when I said a half meter cube of dirt would be one-eighth a full meter I went and got his new multiplication blocks to use as a visual aid. It took a minute, but he got it, especially when I reminded him of the exponential chairs (tiny, regular, and huge) at the science center in New Hampshire. He totally remembered them.
Back on the couch we looked at my months poster and he said he wanted to see snow but didn’t want a car trip. He suggested a plane ride to a country with snow: “I’d appreciate it if it was Greek(Greenland). Mama wouldn’t appreciate it. She hates cold. She could stay. What? She could get work done.”
He did alone time, playing “Ode to Joy” in seven keys. We then played in a random world on Minecraft. He watched the Bright Side video about “All the Bombs”, and that turned into a Bar and Baby Sister game where they blew things up. I made us chocolate milk, then made fish sticks and red rice for lunch. He talked about the 102-1=99 riddle, then he was Bar talking about equations. He went and played his toy piano for a while, also playing with the metronome. He then played the bottom of the piano like a harp, hitting the strings with a chopstick.
We then did “class” time with me being the teacher. We did a little lesson on ‘b’ versus ‘d’. We approached it a few ways, and he said he got it after a few minutes. We’ll pay attention and follow up to make sure. When I took a photo of the sheet we had done i mentioned doing it to document homeschooling, in case we had to explain to the government. He asked why the government would care, and we talked about education laws, and he asked why the government cares if people are educated. We talked about the competitive (against other countries) and financial (more tax revenue) reasons, and then about crime. That led to a whole second discussion of why people steal and their justifications and how they might be caught, which led to how companies use security cameras and guards.
We also reviewed the ‘Bits and Bytes’ and months posters along the way, and then talked about graphing on paper. He snuck back to the iPads to copy a couple more graphs.
He found the Braille options in Desmos and was very intrigued by what it was. So we looked up Braille and looked at how it worked. On paper I wrote some Braille for him, and also did some graphing on paper with him. I made him some crackers and peanut butter. We got into a funny discussion of parenting versus kidding tricks, and how to convince him to get going to the school to hang out in the library. He said the best way to get him to go wasn’t to convince him, but to tell him we weren’t going, then he’d want to go. So we went back and forth using reverse psychology on each other.
We got going a bit after 3. At the library August did a piece of art while I looked, rather unsuccessfully, for books about friends moving away. When August needed to use the bathroom we went out and came back in. Library Eve and one of her friends were sitting at a computer, and I heard the friend, talking about August, say something like, “He’s so cute it’s scary.” We then sat on the beanbags and read books. We read the entire Zeus book before returning it. Entitled and birthright were words we talked about and were words of the day. August told me, “I want to see a harp someday.” And one of his new things in recognizing trade offs: “Here’s a trade off…” This time it came when he was questioning why there were doors, that are locked, in the back of the library, and I suggested they could build an office back here. We then read the Mouse Tales book, then Mr. Tickle from the shelves. Pandemonium was a new word from that.
We chose Apollo, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Chester’s Way, by Kevin Henke, to check out. As we checked out he talked to Liz about math. She knew about Desmos because Lillian is in Anna’s class, and did the roller skate picture we had seen. August told us, “I want to play Minecraft with algebra and trigonometry.”
We headed home. In the car he asked me, “How are blind people’s bodies different?” We talked about that, then as we got out of the car he asked, “Why’s your tongue so comfortable being in your spit all the time?” And why doesn’t it just dissolve. “And why is it so important?” “How does it help you talk?”
At home he said hi to Carly then started showing her graphs. I read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends. He ate chicken and noodles for dinner, but skipped the sweet potato. I went for a run. When I got back she gave him a bath first, then I took a shower. They read some of the Comic Science: Solar System book.
August and I then read Hilo 6: All the Pieces Fit. We’ve waited a year for it, and it was worth it. We read the whole thing. I thought it was going to be the last book in the series, so we were excited to see that a book 7 will be coming next year. Carly had planned to put him to sleep, but reading Hilo took too long, so we decided to do the usual routine. August went in and played with the mandolin for a minute, and said, “I can play music with that baby.”
He was then talking about the speed of light and how that affects time. I told him we cold learn more about it another day. We listened to “Hey Little Mouse!” on Stories Podcast, then listened to a couple meditation tracks. We listened to Max Richter’s “Cypher” on repeat, and he was asleep by 10:10.
Copying complex equations:
Explaining his copying:
Finishing up the equations:
Song of the day on toy piano:
Are there any yottawatts?:
His harp:
