He woke up 6:40 or so. I took him back in and got him back to sleep. I didn’t really get back to sleep and then found out about Edmonds cancelling school, the NBA, etc. I went in to wake him up at 8:10. He went downstairs to Carly, then I went down and played Minecraft with him, after which we had oatmeal for breakfast. We did a little Marble Maze, then he played lots and lots of piano. He had me do a little Piano Maestro. He then used Piano Maestro as a backing track to his improvs. He made a song with multiple chords and said it was his first one.
Carly went to school for a little while to check books out from the library, as Ilana was opening it up for a while. I took a shower while he played a little extra Minecraft. Carly got home and went outside to work. After a bit he went out with her and sat next to her and said, “I want to watch you. I want to see how you work.”
He was really excited about going to Ms. Dalit at noon, and as we got going and got in the car he said “I’m so excited!” a few times.
At piano he showed off his pieces, then they discussed augmented chords. She didn’t really tell him anything about how to use them, which is what he wanted, but then they worked on moving his hands. That’s what he really wanted. He didn’t get the walking thing at first, then I went and helped a little. I was impressed with his patience with her though, as she kept saying “No” to him, but he’d try over and over. But soon he caught on, and was going up and down octaves with his right had quite smoothly. He also learned the left, but it was more difficult. They also started working on “Oh, Susanna”. I told her it made me think of Bugs Bunny, but she didn’t remember that one.
So his homework (he didn’t like using that word) was to practice his right and left hands going up and down (but not together, as she said that would probably frustrate him), practice reading notes around, and to work on “Oh, Susanna”.
I had planned on going to a park, but he was really excited about showing Carly how he could move his hands, so we went straight home. On the way we listened to the first Story Pirates podcast story. In the car he was talking about wanting to convert numbers to all sorts of bases, not just 2, 10, and 16, and I found an app on the App Store that would do that.
We went inside and he showed Carly. They discussed I+1, which is apparently a system she’s used with her students to discuss what’s too easy, in their learning zone, or too hard. He said moving his right hand was so easy it was I+0, but the left hand was harder.
We went outside in the yard and ended up discussing whether corona was worse than “large scale nuclear war” or other things he listed. We had a lunch of grapes and carrots and hummus and egg. He was trying to remember a specific term related to black holes so I let him watch the Fermi Paradox and Black Hole videos from Kurzgesagt, but he didn’t find it. For alone time he listened to “The Hat, the Horn, the Purse” on Circle Round, then we played Minecraft.
We did some piano practice and I taught him the “Oh Susanna” lyrics after he asked to listen to it and we listened the Pete Seeger version. He liked the lyrics so much so I told him the “One dark morning” poem.
He had the last half of his cupcakes, and we watched the newest Grian video. Carly had started her happy hour Zoom chat with Alex and Jeff and a few other work people, like Cassie, when they showed up. He played piano for them, then again later when there was more people.
He went outside and told us, “It doesn’t matter if you look at the sun because there is no sun.” It was really cloudy. He played more piano, then we did some handwriting practice, then he played for them a second time. We spent some time looking at SuperSonics Piano songs, and there was at least one that he really wanted to learn.
She eventually hung up, then read The Adventures of Penrose, the Mathematical Cat. He did some alone time, then paused that to eat schnitzel and broccoli and listened to KidNuz and Pants on Fire. He finished the alone time and we played Minecraft. He was grumpy at the end, but we eventually watched a Numberphile about the easiest problem everyone gets wrong (basically the Monty Hall problem), then got him upstairs for a hair washing day (and lollipop). Carly read more of the cat book to him (and had also read the Grace Hopper book earlier, I think).
The winds were getting really strong, and had been slamming the shutters shut and we heard things banging outside. The tent cover came off of Shmuel’s ugly tent thing as well. Maybe he’ll take it down…
He said he’d brush his teeth, “As soon as she stops worrying about Coronavirus…it’s just annoying.” We went downstairs for a few minutes of piano. I couldn’t refuse a request like that. As we went back up he said, “It bugged me that I didn’t know how to play any pieces with a range of ten.”
We went in to bed, and used the bluetooth speaker to listen to things. It worked really well. We listened to “White Doe, Fairy Doe” on Stories Podcast and then a funny short one called “Lazy Jack” from Journey with Story. Calf was a word of the day. We listened to Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” which he said he liked but was too exciting for falling asleep. There were just five minutes left of it, so we finished it up. He insisted on telling me a short Sister in Minecraft game about moustache removal. We then listened to Philip Glass’s Glass: Solo Piano album. Which is what, if I’m sitting in piano recitals in the future, more like what I’d like to hear, as opposed to Debussy. He was asleep by 10:45.
Chords and tune improv:
Improv singing to it:
Working on finger movement:
His roll to the couch and computer:
I Like Moving My Hands song:
Showing Oma how he can move his fingers:
The winds outside:
Finger moving improv:
Composing in action:
