Monday, February 10: Rainy Tu Bishvat at school

I went upstairs just after 8 and managed to get him up at 8:20. Downstairs I read Where the Sidewalk Ends. He then watched a Phineas Rage video for part of his time, then we did a little Minecraft. For educational videos he watched the Kurzgesagt milk video, then the Mars base one, again. It is one his favorites, and he talked about how he was going to build a rocket to Mars. He paused to go to the bathroom, and asked me, “How do you make cheese?” And asked why does it taste different. But when I suggested we look it up, he wanted to get back to the Mars base video.

He had a slice of French toast, then, still hungry, a bowl of oatmeal a while later. He did alone time on the piano, playing scales in more keys and transposing his songs. We played Minecraft. We were protecting villagers and he called me “Agent dada.” I got us ready to go and we headed to school. Raining slightly as we left, but August didn’t really hesitate. Raining a bit harder by school and I told him we could wait until he was ready. He was brave about it and let us walk in.

There was supposed to be a nature reserve tour at 10:50 and we were a couple minutes late. August let us walk over there, as perhaps tour would be happening in the yurt. As we got close I said I didn’t see anyone in it, nor did we see or hear anyone in the nature reserve. August immediately headed back.

We headed to the library, where I found the third Last Kids on Earth book. We sat in the back right corner on the bean bag chairs and started reading it. August made a little fort out of the umbrella and our other items as I read. ]Ms. Ilana came in with a class. We were probably fine but decided to head out to the chess area. But once out there August decided to head over to lunch. Checked out the book and walked over. We walked into the cafeteria and August declared it too busy.

We went over to Carly’s classroom. August stuck his head in, but Carly was meeting with Tom. He was very cute and giggly until Carly came to the door and said we could come in. August was telling Carly rhymes, and said, “There’s not a chance, I’ll see it in advance.” “What’s advance mean?” We stayed for a few minutes and August got comfy on a bean bag, then we said goodbye and headed to the cafeteria. No lines now, so we got a lunch of salmon, rice, and corn. We never thought to come back later for a coffee and muffin.

We went to the far end of the long tables, which aren’t labeled for classes (other tables say 5A, etc.) and ate. As we were close to being done, Eve’s kindergarten teacher came in the door behind us and came right up to me and said, “You have to move. This is where kindergarten sits.” No sorry, or please or thank you in either words or tone. I couldn’t believe it.

August had eaten most of the lunch. We went out the main entrance and I finished off the lunch. We saw Zoe then, and August didn’t recognize her, I think because of her knitted pink hat. We hadn’t seen Eve with her class.

We went back to the library and read more. When Ilana came in with an older, and louder, class we stayed. August then switched to the calculators. He took me over to the legos on the wall and showed me how he could do an area for mule for them. We did some crazy problems where we would then round the answer, then calculate backwards to see how off it became. At one point he told me, “The 88th root of pi is 1…if you round.” I already read him some riddles for a book on the shelves.

A little before 12:50 we headed down to Mandy’s classroom for the next session, where 6th graders were supposed to present on human impacts on the Earth, then we were supposed to turn an old shirt into a reusable bag. We were a few minutes early, and she had students in there, so we decided to stay outside until classes came. August spent about ten minutes giving me a tour of the orchard area and what he remembers from visiting it in preschool. We never saw anyone go in the room, and when I peeked in again it looked like they might have been working on shirts.

So we bailed on that one as well. We went back to the library, where August had me play a full game of chess against myself. He took photos and videos. We also watched the 3D printer at work and checked on it a couple times. Eventually we got going. Didn’t worry about the final session (planting in the butterfly garden). Too cold and a bit rainy again, if it even happened.

We picked up the Amazon box on our way out. It included the piano tuning kit and the game of tiddly winks. At home we first opened those and tried to play. Kind of fun, but neither of us could get them to really jump in the air.

I started tuning the piano. Definitely seems doable, although hard when someone keeps playing the piano. I did a few of the lower keys though, and by the evening would have about 12 notes sounding okay. August played more piano, and was coming up with a dissonant pattern that he liked. He called it part of his “Abstricity”, as he called it: his abstractness. He had had a Brother game where he meets a girl that really hates germs, and of course Brother is all germy. We then did music time. He wanted me to be Ms. Safe, teaching the class, and we sat at the piano and used it and Paper to cover time signatures, note lengths, and started on some sight reading. It was a good start.

He did some composing in Notion, then I let him watch a couple videos about changes in the upcoming Minecraft release and we ate crackers and meat. He then did more composing on Notion and showed me his favorite. We hooked up the keyboard and he kept playing for his alone time.

We played Minecraft, and he randomly asked, “What’s degradation mean?” From one of his videos, I think. Carly came home, rather late, and when we were done we had nutty noodles for dinner. They were doing math together, focusing on calculating the percentages of things. She cooked an artichoke and they did more math as they ate it together. He did more graphing and said, “I added on to this one significantly.” Carly had yesterday said it had been her dream to have a child who said “appropriately” when he said it about something.

I went out on a run. Stopped when it got too rainy. Carly said it had been hard to get him upstairs. He was just on the edge. He had requested Cheerios before he went up, then wanted oatmeal, etc. She managed though, and when I got home they were finishing up his bath. They read Comic Science: Solar System and then watched a video involving the sun being the size of a basketball on a What if? channel that she found. She got him more Cheerios as I took over. He talked about squishing a tall cylinder and how that would change the X and Y lengths of it. I then introduced the Z axis.

We listened to “The Werewolf at the Inn” on Stories Podcast. He asked “Why are things blurry?” when you move your hand quickly. We talked about some of the limits of sight and discussed blind spots, a word of the day. Sort of early, so after he went to the bathroom I introduced him to a new podcast, Ear Snacks, about kids and music and the world. He really liked the episode on “Tempo!” I asked what music he wanted to listen to and he agreed on Benge. I put on his Forms 2 album and August took quite a while and fell asleep about 10:20.

More progression and the head turn: