I woke him up at 8:15. Took a while to get him going. Downstairs I started to read Juna’s Jar. We got as far as the first page. It mentioned kimchi, and I told him about it. We looked up Kimchi jars on Google so he could see them, then I told him about women making it in the park. He asked why it was the women, and we talked about gender roles in societies. He said, “At least it’s better than in Italy 400 years ago…” In Cosmos last night they had covered the trial and execution of Giordano Bruno. August then also brought up white people having more power—this was from reading Hidden Faces with Carly yesterday. I didn’t know that at the time, so mainly talked about the Civil War, which we’ve discussed before, then he asked if a war could start without the government being involved (or something like that) and that led to a discussion of the differences between revolutionary and civil wars. We didn’t get back to the book.
He played some piano, then came back for the book, but then instead asked if a civil war be ended with a nuclear bomb. I told him about the Space Race and MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction. He made a connection to “It’s like a machine where you have to run infinitely fast to get the cake…” That is a reference to a Joseph’s Machine video. August then decided, “I think I know what humanity needs to build: an iceberg duplicator to stop climate change.” We discussed how the Cold War ended. When I said the Soviet Union fell apart he said, “You mean literally fell apart? Into particles?” I clarified what I meant, but then also told him about the Berlin Wall.
He went back to the piano and we practiced “Oh, Susanna”. When Carly came in he asked, “Mama, do you want to see some dissonance?” We played Minecraft, then I made French toast. He said something, and I mentioned there being something like a syrup flood. Carly looked it up and it was a molasses flood.
After breakfast he played with the marble maze a bit, then did a second alone time. He played piano and listened to Circle Round’s “Sir Luck and Mister Riches”. He listened to the whole story. At the end he did the thing he’s been doing for a few days, saying the words he has memorized in the intros/outros along with the audio. He and Carly then played Minecraft, after which they read Grace Hopper.
I went up and took a shower. Several days ago the heater had started to make a weird smell and we haven’t used it since. We also hadn’t tried it as Carly has been using the extension cord. But I tried it, and it was just fine. Something must have fallen/been dropped in it. Back downstairs he agreed to do math. He wanted to learn about sine, etc. so we did so by starting the Brilliant trigonometry class. Didn’t get far, as it instantly talked about ratios, which August doesn’t really know about. So I used Paper and drew different shapes and taught him all about ratios and how they reduce and how they are similar to but different to fractions. I was trying to do it in the Ms. Safe voice, as he wanted.
After a really good amount of math he went and played piano. He has a triplet sixteenth notes rhythm for London Bridge. He compared his old way of playing (the hitting the keys that Dalit didn’t like) with his smooth finger movement. He doesn’t like his old way now: “I think the texture is too spikey…I think I like that curvy line instead of this…” The curvy line referring to the new way.
I made us hotdogs for lunch. August asked what kind of meat it was and declared, “I won’t eat cow!…I watched a video about meat…it causes climate change…” Luckily, they were chicken.
I then got to work on the apple pie for pi day. I had planned to walk over to the store to get supplies, but luckily Carly had bought a big bag of apples, and we had a full pack of crust. It deprived us of a walk, but we then learned that Israel had gone crazy on the rumors that the government was going to impose strict new quarantine rules and shutter businesses.
Carly started a Zoom with Korea Megan and me to figure out all of the features before using it with her students. August enjoyed chatting with her and Tori. Carly then went for a run, and August helped me finish the pie (he mainly helped chop the apples in the food processor and eat the extra bits of crust) and we got it in the oven.
He did more Desmos, and found out how to expand continually. Probably knows more about Desmos than a lot of math teachers. For alone time he listened to “Fire on the other side of the world” from Circle Round. Cherie called, so instead of playing Minecraft with Carly right away he got some special Oma video time and he watched some Phineas Rage. After hanging up with Cherie, they then called Vivian and Colin. They kept wanting to talk about Coronavirus and August kept saying, “I don’t want to talk about it!” Vivian had even drawn a picture of a coronavirus.
I went upstairs to work. August came up with Colin for a minute, then took him back downstairs to show him the pie. He and Carly then played Minecraft. I went down after six when he wanted pie. We ate, and he asked, “What’s casein?” A word of the day. In milk, that is. I said it was the protein. He continued, “That give it its taste and structure, you mean?” He then told me about mutations that lead to cancer.
He did some of the Marble Maze while I tried to figure out some financial stuff (we need to deposit Carly’s pension in a different account because Raymond James isn’t operating in Israel any more). He and I said something at the same time, and I taught him the “jinx” game.
August asked, “Why in the United States 400 years ago did people care if you were black or white?” We talked about it (I think he is kind of confusing his timeframes, as 400 years was the Giordano Bruno reference, and the segregation he was talking about was from Hidden Figures. He mainly talked about the separate bathrooms and processed it through a game: “You should be Brother and Bar teleports you back 400 years…”
He was hungry so had some peanut butter crackers. And he asked, “What’s impregnate mean?” Another one from the milk video. He then came up with a rather funny “How to Kill Cows” song.
I got him up to his bath. He was being kind of annoying, especially to Carly, but she got him through it. In bed We listened to the new Stories Podcast, “Grahamquackers” and then I found a couple of videos for us to watch for Pi Day: a Ted-Ed video (https://youtu.be/9a5vHXsUvUw) and a really good Vihart video (https://youtu.be/Y4Lc5-6L1pE). August didn’t want to watch it at first as she mentioned coronavirus, but I asked him to keep watching, and it was so funny that he liked it.
Carly came in and said good night, then we listened to two Bedtime Explorers: “Minmi” and “Pterodactyl”. We listened to the Philip Glass piano album and he fell asleep around 10:30.
The morning improv:
Song of the day:
Singing and marble maze:
Talking to Megan and Tori in India:
Explaining a limitation of Desmos:
