He woke me up once during the night, just before 6, to put his blanket back on. I then woke him up at 8:05. He was out of his covers again, sideways on the bed. He went downstairs and said good morning to Carly. After a minute he went for his iPad. I read some poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends, then he was graphing on his iPad. Carly got him cereal and he was off the iPad while they had breakfast, and she was watching a Khan Academy video and they were learning about slope. August told her, “Mama, here’s what happens to y as x approaches infinity in y=x/x y equals 1. It’s easy, because anything divided by itself is always 1.”
Carly was playing piano and they talked about it, then he wanted to show her a dissonant sound on his synth and got it out and spent time creating really dissonant sounds. He kept playing music until about 9:20. “Wait, I forgot about Minecraft! That’s crazy! Crazy!…I got so caught up in it…”
They played Minecraft, then we got him ready and Carly took him on a short trip to the store up in town and they stopped at a park to play. They were back at 12. He played with the synth and was recording things based on the chromatic scale. He was then composing, in Notion, for Carly and made a couple of things for her to then play on the piano. In debating something about that he told her, “There’s no compromise here.”
I then took him to Gabi’s. August started in on the war, as usual. It isn’t really much of a game, as he just had his animals kill Gabi’s pieces as soon as they moved. So first I tried introducing pick up sticks. Gabi taught August how to play that, so it worked for a few minutes. Then back to war. I was then stacking the animals, making pyramids. Eventually August got into it, and made a sculpture out of all of the animals. Math was discussed, and Gabi said he had a couple of math-based games. August was interested, so we spent the rest of the time learning Sleeping Queens. August liked it, although he didn’t play himself, instead watching what cards Gabi and I had. It is a fun game, although all about the kings and jacks fighting over how many of the sleeping queens they can capture, so there’s that.
On the way to the car we discussed equations and constants, a word of the day. We then drove to Ra’anana Park. He did a ton of walking today. We walked around to the music area to see the progress they’ve made. We were discussing math and how the lower levels are easy for him and he wants upper level math. We sat in a corner area near the music area and he made some funny faces and I sent photos to Carly. He then typed her messages, and sent her a crazy video as well.
We kept walking. As I stood up his water bottle fell out and the lid cracked. Still usable, but the one from Cherie and Chuck is coming just in time. He did some climbing on some fence things and we took some making-mama-nervous photos. We found a new bench, which has solar panels on top and phone charging stations. He liked that.
He joked about the big egg hatching and ran in circles around it. We kept walking over to the big playground area. Never actually played in it, but he climbed higher than he ever has on the rope thing, then we sat at a bench and had a snack. In the round center area there was a large group with students/adults with special needs riding around on big three-wheeled bikes. August had a lot of questions about them that we discussed. He climbed in a swing and ate a bar while he watched them riding.
We then played on the exercise equipment. There, there were a few guys practicing gymnastics on the two bars. Quite impressive, as they were doing flips over and under the bars. Eventually we went over to a bench and sat and did more Brilliant, learning the equation for the energy of a wave. We left at 4, and he had a series of stories where he was a student talking to the different math teachers at different levels, like Ms. Safe, then her twin sister Ms. Danger, who was 1st grade, and then an advanced math teacher, that actually wasn’t advanced. We stopped at the bathroom, then headed home.
At home he got to composing on the iPad, then was doing music with Carly, composing practice pieces for her. He had spaghetti, then paused the piano stuff to have more. He was then composing at the piano. He discovered the notation/commands for the sustain pedal and trill, a word of the day.
Carly read the Astrophysics book, then he was graphing, and came up with more cool stuff. We watched a video on how to compose a song. He kept graphing but also was paying attention, at least part of the time. Consonant sounds was another word of the day. He did more composing, then playing of piano for alone time.
I went for a run. They watched a few minutes of Contact and played Minecraft. I took a shower, and when I came down he was watching a Kurzgesagt video. He was very dramatic about going upstairs. Finally got him laughing after he told me not to “say it” and then I kept accidentally saying “it.” Got him in to take a bath at 8:50.
Carly gave him a bath, then I finished reading the digging chapter of How To. We went in the bedroom and listened to the Stories Podcast “Disney World” story. Monorail and celebrity were words of the day. After a while he realized it wasn’t a folk tale so we found something else, “The Belly of the Beast”. In Bedtime Explorers we listened to “Magic Island”. He was asleep around 10:30.
Synth sounds:
A video for mama:
Climbing his highest:
Swinging and eating and watching:
Spinning:
Piano song:
