I had my book group meeting during the night, which went well. No Chris as he is in Mexico for a family vacation around their anniversary.
Carly got August up at about 8:05. She got him to walk by me nice and quiet, although I was actually awake to hear. Downstairs they read Astrophysics, then played Minecraft. I came down as they were playing. August watched a couple educational videos, then a Joseph’s Machines, then Carly read a bit more of the book to him. He interrupted to start graphing though. He had two functions that both made circles and showed me, and I pointed out that they were the some because one simplified to r=1. He actually liked that, saying, “So basically I made an overcomplexity of the equation of r=1.” He tried to get Carly to agree to a graphing competition, and offered, “Fine, so I’ll go into Lonely Lands or whatever world you want for the next week.” Since he’s always wanting to go in different Minecraft worlds and she wants to stay in one.
They kept doing more and more math. Carly on Khan Academy and practicing with the quadratic equation. Eventually I declared his graph the winner, as it had a bunch of symmetrical lines and circles and curves all meeting around the 1,1 type of coordinates. Back on the couch he said to her, “Symmetry man, symmetry.”
Outside we did a chapter in Waves and Light. interference, superposition, phase, phase différence
Inside we did the first chapter of the course Calculus in a Nutshell, at his request. Derivative was the first big concept. He had me stop and define tangent better for him at one point, but otherwise we were just discussing what is in the course. At the end he said, “Nice. I didn’t know I’d understand tangent so much.”
He had a quesadilla that he picked the cheese out of. Then did alone time on the piano. Paused to show me a rattlely key. Then randomly told me, “Just so you know there’s Ursa Minor too…there’s Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.” Maybe from the Astrophysics book? In Minecraft we worked on our forest and complex, starting to make a wall around it. Carly went for a walk or run.
He played with a calculator and we were discussing cubed numbers and names of big numbers. He used my formula for a hollow cube. Carly got back. When she came downstairs they did piano. He asked what two notes together were (again—he had asked Dalit, but she just said “Not a chord”). I looked it up and it is a dyad. He played minor scales for her. I made us smoked tuna sandwiches using the smoked canned tuna and the sun dried tomato bed. August loved it and kept saying “Yum!” He asked about something being an “oversimplification”. We discussed the difference between oversimplification and simplification.
When Carly got him dressed he said, “What are you doing? I don’t like stylish.” We all went for a walk, and walked over to the little mall. We went to Tiv Taam and got important things like crackers and wine. On the way back we were talking about something and I asked if he knew the difference between horizontal and vertical. He said of course, and explained that Oma had taught him those words when they were playing the tablet game. We were also discussing infinity and the speed of light, and why nothing can go as fast as light. We stopped to look at the scum in a big puddle, and I had one of the sample things for the microscope in the backpack so I got a sample. August then stopped to watch some ants.
We got home a bit after 4. They stayed outside and did some reading, then Facetimed with Cherie and Chuck. I then went for a run. He did alone time and they did Minecraft in Lonely Lands. I took a shower, then got him off the iPad. We did reading time, watching the Preschool Prep videos for three sounds and brainstorming words for our cards. He built a structure for a foot rest, then he read one book to me on Rivet. We were about done with that when Carly came down, on FaceTime with Cassie and kids. August and Carly mainly talked to Colin.
I got him a dinner of the tuna, some pickles, and rice. He and I had a good discussion about why it is good to be weird. He did a lot of more really cool graphs today. One looked like a flower. Got him upstairs and he was hiding in the blanket. I heard him ask Carly to unleash all of her parenting tricks at once.
He told us both, “A strangelet us a tiny piece of strange matter.” From Astrophysics, I think.
Carly gave him a bath as I folded laundry. When he came in to the bedroom we discussed the election as I had been listening to the news about Bloomberg. He finished reading the Christmas party story on Rivet to me. He then asked, “Where’s President Garfield?” And continued, “In Heaven?…In heaven playing Minecraft…” I loved the image of past presidents sitting around playing Minecraft together.
He read more Rivet books, breaking through several level 1 books on his own. On the Stories Podcast we listened to “The Pumpkin Seeds”. One Bedtime Explorers, “Monkey” I think, then I put on an album of Philip Glass piano music. He asked me, “Can you make Siri add music?” Apparently he and Carly have had issues with that. He kept talking, discussing minor scales, and asking things like, “What’s 13 factorial?” and “90 plus 90 is 180, right?” and “19 plus 19 is 28…no, no…9 plus 9 is 18, carry the one…” He was even trying to do a head stand at one point. He was finally asleep at 10:35.
Making up trig functions:
Dissonant chords:
Hiding under the carpety blanket:
