He was up at 7:15. Downstairs we read some of The Last Kids on Earth. We then played Minecraft and learned about wolves and dogs on Brains On! We had breakfast and he played some piano, then did graphing. He was making complex things to equal a radius, and said, “I wanted an abstract radius.” He was still hungry so had crackers and PB as we got going. He asked why the graphs for sine and cosine are shifted from one another, and I figured out, based on what we learned about how sine relates to a circle, that cosine measures on the other axis and showed him that. Finally, as we were going he was making up riddles for the news reporter. I had the news reporter say “And this is called changing the subject.” August liked that line and repeated it a few times.
We got going and drove to Ra’anana Park. Gilad and Lauren came in right behind us. Gilad rode around a bit and August walked. August used the phrase “Molten ice”, which he picked up from How To, a few times. August was quiet at first, I thought because he was being shy, but then it turned out he was thinking about math. At one point he said, “Here’s why the volume equation works…” and explained why it is basically area times height (something I’ve explained before, but he now internalized, talking about stacking blocks) and then explaining that “A quarter is .25…”
We headed over to the covered playground. He and Gilad played around, and Sara showed up with Eliza after a few minutes. Today was her birthday so we said happy birthday and she had brought snacks. They were spinning on the big thing and August used a hairclip he found to make friction and heat with it. They moved to the structure to play airplane/spaceship and August used the calculator to make spaceship calculations about how far they had to go, etc. Eliza handed out the first snack: a small box of jelly bean sort of things.
Eventually Eliza suggested moving up to the maze part. August rode his bike up and had me lead him with the snack bag, like he was an animal in Minecraft. Up at the concrete table they sat and had snack/lunch. The next snack from Eliza was a bag of Pirate Booty, which August really liked. August sat/stood on the table and watched Gilad chasing Eliza, and pointing out where Eliza was. He was really excited about it, and said, “I can’t believe they do this.” “You’re crazy kids.” We were also invited to Eliza’s party in a couple weeks. He was telling Sara about what he’s been doing in Minecraft and said, “It’s fun to fall from insane heights.” August never got into the chasing game, but was jumping around with them when they were jumping over a line. He said, “I’m in creative! Hot lava doesn’t scare me!”
Gilad and Lauren left first, and we went down to the musical instruments and played with Eliza. On the floor thing August realized that you could play a major chord. Eventually we said goodbye and got going. By the car he did the spinning wheel thing, then we got driving to Even Yehuda. We parked and walked up to piano.
Piano was okay. They really got stuck on “On the Merry-Go-Round” He seemed stuck on something, but I couldn’t tell what for a while. It was a little painful as they both seemed to be struggling. She doesn’t mode things for him, instead just pointing at the music. Maybe that’s intentional, getting him to work on the sight reading. But then they got through the rest quickly after a point. He showed off his various minor scales (having showed off the blues minor earlier) then they moved on to “Skip to the Lou”, which she had had me pick out of a book. It was painful getting him to focus on reading the notes of the arpeggio, although once he did he easily knew it was F Major.
Things to review:
• note lengths. When she was having him sight read he seemed confused by the half note
• how to tell the flats and sharps
• If you have one flat it will always be the same: B flat
She just kept going with him though, and at 1:55 she asked what time it was. I had thought it was supposed to be a 45 minute lesson, but then though well maybe it was 50, since she went more than that last week as well. She’d just lost track of time. She went and let her next student in. He was 11 or so, and sat down and started playing “The Entertainer” by Joplin. I pointed it out to August and told Dalit we had just been listening to it. August was really excited about a kid playing it and as we went outside he watched him through the window.
We walked to the car and drove to school. We first went to the cafeteria and got a piece of pizza again, a muffin, and my cappuccino. August always laughs now and says “Cappuccino! Mocha!” because of the General. We read more of The Last Kids on Earth. Karaoke was a word of the day. We walked to the library and saw Ben Ben with his class, then watched some of the robotics competition which was being live-streamed on the big monitor. We saw the AIS team. They didn’t do so well in the round we saw, although they were much better than one of their teammates.
We went down and picked up Eve, then went to Heather’s classroom to check in. Eve barged in and said hi. The bell had rung, but Heather was still talking to her AP Art History class—a whole five students.
We went over to the field because Eve wanted to play soccer with her friend again. That only lasted a few minutes as baseball took over. We moved to the playground. August had coped by doing scientific calculators and we figured out the ‘Mean’ and ‘LCM’ commands and I explained those to him. He then played on the playground as well. They climbed around, and eventually August wanted to head home. Eve was talking to a girl and her mom first, and when they were done August told her, “That girl you were just talking to looks like an older version of you.”
We headed home. First though we stopped at the flag poles and I taught them the word topiary as they discussed the person and camel. At the house August had me put the bike on top of shoes so he could do the tire thing. I went in and made strawberries, chocolate milk, and then crackers and cheese for a snack. They played outside the whole time. They had a stream down the slide, made a rainbow, and played in the Zinnie house. August came in and said that Eve was the mean old lady. I went and typed outside. Eve had an old lady voice and was using ribbon as electrical wire around her house. They were pretty funny together.
Carly got home, and Eve got picked up around 5:30. I had told August he could have one round of Minecraft without alone time, so we did that, in the flat world.
I then went upstairs to do some work. They did his alone time and then second Minecraft, and I went up to do some work. She gave him a bath and I took over by 9:30 and read the “How to Throw” chapter of How To. We then listened to”Froggy Lost Her Tale” on Stories Podcast. He asked, “Have you been on the ISS? AKA the International Space Station?” “Do you like my use of AKA?”
The Bedtime Explorers podcast was having issues not streaming again, so I was trying to get an episode to download instead and I put on piano music. While I was trying to get that to work he suddenly rolled over and was asleep. It was only 10:10.
Funny panda in Minecraft:
Craziest graph yet:
Spinning:
Watching the game of chase:
Making music:
Xylophone rhythm:
Changing pitch with the bicycle tire:
Piano lesson 1:
Piano lesson 2:
Talking to Eve on the playground:
The old lady and her fence:
