He was up at 7:25. We got in the couch bed, then he asked, “Can somebody grow up with just one eye?” This comes out of the whole Braille discussion yesterday. We discussed it, and the concept of glass eyes was new to him. He then spent about 5 minutes circled up, and with his head under a blanket, before jumping up and marching downstairs and getting his iPad.
We played Minecraft, finding an area in our creative world we’d been in before but forgotten about. He had some oatmeal and spent some time practicing scales and reading the bits and bytes poster before we got going.
On the way up to Shani’s she called, saying they had an electrician there and it was hectic and asking if we could come at 9:45. We turned left and headed into town, getting caught in a Even Yehuda traffic jam for a minute. We parked right across from the bakery and went in and got 4 things, then walked over to the park and ate them. He had a sweet one, then ate his savory. I had accidentally gotten two savories. He ate most of my second one, so that worked out well. We discussed the meaning of savory. We played Brother games along the way. As Myna or someone he said, “I was going to have Bar take the retinas out of my eyes so I could practice being blind.”
We then headed to Shani’s. He went on the swing and said he was a planet in orbit and the other ones were his moons. They then did the fishing activity as he was in the swing. Putting the pieces in at the end was a good activity. He said, “I don’t want to use my arms anymore!” as they were kind of tired by the end.
They went to the table and he taught her all about binary code: “That’s binary. That’s basically the basics of binary. I can even do 17.”
He then let her teach him something. They practiced drawing all the numerals correctly, and some letters as well. A couple times he told her, “Nice handwriting!” When he was doing well on 3s she asked if he was ready to move on to 4s but he said he needed more practice on 3s. They also discussed L sounds and he came up with words with medial Ls like igloo. Next they did 4s.
They then moved to the sewing sort of thing. He had a lot of fun with that, and she offered to let him borrow it. He twice refused, saying he wanted to let other kids play with it. This time, when I asked if he wanted to buy it himself he said yes. So we’ll have to swing by a toy store again sometime. He had time at the end to build one structure out of the blocks, then we got going.
We drove over to what we call the Shani Park and parked. We had about ten minutes to play. As we parked the song “The Combine” was on and we discussed revolutionary war after he heard it in the song. And he asked, “Why is it bright when you turn on the lights in a room?” He asked more about the wars, and I mentioned having a video about World War I for him to watch. He initially said no way, as he didn’t want to see people dying. I assured him it wasn’t that sort of video. On a spinning thing he experienced equal and opposite reactions, then we got walking up to his piano lesson, which was just three minutes away.
He had fun at the piano lesson, although I was less excited this time. He ran in (after we spent a minute looking at the planters and rocks outside) ready to show her his new songs. She was really focused on hand position, which I understand but she wasn’t listening to what he was trying to play for her. He was giggling about it though, as she was using the visualization of having a little bird under his hands, and if he flattened his hands it would squish it, or if he lifted them up it would fly away. At one point he said, “I’m in heaven.”
He was playing modes, and she taught him how to press the pedal every measure. They focused on finger placement and where the notes are on the treble and bass clef. At one point when he showed her something her response was, “You didn’t do any of the things I told you about your hands.” She hadn’t given him a single compliment yet… When he did play how she liked she said, “Exactly like this, yes.” It was the closest to a compliment she got. She was also a bit snappy with me. She had to ask me for the English terms for things a few times, and August asked why she kept forgetting words. I told him it wasn’t that she was forgetting, but that she didn’t know the English term. I think she missed me saying “English” in there, as she told me about how she was studying at an advanced level and knew the terms in Hebrew, but not English. I assured her a few times that that was exactly what I had told him.
At the end she asked me to focus on four things with him:
• keep the bird in
• Don’t hit the piano
• Finger position – (I think we should watch a video on this, because then when I looked at what she wanted I wasn’t actually clear myself about the tips of the fingers)
• wrist position
They also decided he’d keep working on the piece he has. They discussed the piece, and the chord accompaniment. He thought the chords looked odd, and said, “That’s blowing my mind, man!”
He still seemed happy enough about it, so not too worried yet. I’m hoping that once he improves his hand position she’ll mellow a bit. Also, if we work on it, then I remind him to play like that when we go in, and tell her he needs a couple minutes to show her what he has worked on right at the beginning, that will help things.
We walked back to the park and played around. We went on the round swing and he had us repeating the Brother needing to pee in the desert story. We did it a few times. I would have loved to stay in the park longer, but he was just focused on doing it again and again, so I got us headed home to get out of it.
We were home at 12:15. In the car he asked about how radiation causes cancer. He was surprised to learn what cancer is. He had thought it was a virus or something. He asked how great grandpa Steve died, and we talked about diseases of aging versus others. He listed all sorts of things he’s learned about: Ebola, AIDS, kidney failure, and several others I didn’t know he had much of an idea about.
He did alone time and I exercised. We played Minecraft, going back to our Survival Island world we haven’t work on for quite a while. In the inventory for a potion he asked, “Why does it say poison and not coison?” I’m pretty sure he was joking and knows that it is actually pronounced ‘poison’ and not how he’s always pronounced it ‘poison’, but it wasn’t entirely clear. I assured him he could always pronounce it ‘poison’ though. I made a strawberry smoothie and brother games and read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends.
He started graphing, and I figured out how to do the teacher activities in Desmos. Setting it up was actually quite frustrating, as a couple things aren’t obvious. We figured the system out though and he did a good part of a lesson that had him changing the slope and height of line equations so that the balls rolling on them would hit the stars. So that worked really well.
I made us quesadillas and we went outside and ate them at the table and did some multiplication blocks. I was figuring out which ones he knows and which he doesn’t. He knows a good amount, but there are several he doesn’t.
He asked how many different ways you could arrange the blocks in the box. We started with two and figured out the pattern. I realized it was the factorial patter, so inside I did a lesson on factorials (in Paper), finding out that with 27 blocks it was an insanely huge number. And he did a little more graphing. We spent some time with the ear training apps, then he went and was doing chords on the piano. He asked, “What’s hypotenuse mean?”
He wanted to do binary, so we did binary for a long time. He wanted bigger numbers, so while I redrew my template he occupied himself by dropping things like markers and his shoes down my sweatshirt. We did a lot of base numbers, converting one big number into things like Base 20 and Base 200 and others.
Carly got home. He did his second alone time, playing piano, rubber bands on drawers, and playing with the cubes. I went for a run. They played Minecraft, and then he was watching the Kurzgesagt fusion video. He ate veggies and rice for dinner. He asked Carly for “more whole grains.” I took a shower. They were reading Comic Science: Solar System. Carly went upstairs. We watched a couple videos I’d been saving for him: Ted-Ed on “Why can’t you divide by zero?” and “Why perpetual motion machines don’t work”.
I got him upstairs for his bath and washed him. He was coming up with different mathematical expressions and wrote one that was “A complex way of saying ‘What’s 9 times 3?’” He had me take a screenshot of that one. Carly actually put him to sleep tonight, in the big bed. August had second thoughts before I said goodnight, wanting to sleep in his own bed. But I brought in his usual blanket and pillows and he was okay with those. I said goodnight to them about 9:30.
Reading the bits poster:
Twirling in the swing:
Playing his piece at piano:
Multiplication cubes:
