By the end of the day the Israeli government announced even further restrictions, saying people couldn’t leave their homes except for essentials, like buying groceries and medical care. That means no going to parks or for walks. So our bike ride yesterday might be the last for a while. At least we have a yard.
A little bird flew in the kitchen at 7:50. I opened one of the windows, then was struggling to open one of the two windows it was closest to, then it was able to find the open window and was off.
He woke up at 8:15. He called me up, then went back in his room to confuse me. Downstairs we read Ben Braver He then went and practiced his song. He had a bit of a Brother game, where he meets a girl who is a walking atomic bomb in the jungle, which was based on a line in the book. Carly came in, her first virtual schooling meeting had gone well, and said good morning, then went back out to work. August did some Desmos, asking why y^2=x^2 has two lines. Doesn’t quite seem convinced by the answer. Think we need to work through some of these line graphs sometime.
We then played Minecraft in the Survival Island world. We listened to a 99% Invisible on weather forecasting. We had oatmeal for breakfast and I taught him the joke about “Is your refrigerator running?” He then was acting it out with Brother. He played “Oh Susanna” on piano, then ate and did more Brother game. August thought Brother’s “Head too big for your body” joke, talking about Bar, was hilarious. Carly got back from school. He convinced her to do a quick piano competition.
I read The Bear and the Piano, which we haven’t done for a long time. Sold out was a word of the day. We then watched Carmen from the Metropolitan Opera, which was free to watch today. August was quite intrigued, and urchin was a word of the day. We watched a little over twenty minutes. Unfortunately, it was plagued with technical issues in that when it was working subtitles weren’t working and later in the day it wouldn’t stream video, just audio. But at least the translations would show up. So I described what was going on based on the Wikipedia synopsis.
For alone time he played piano and listened to “The Chattering Clams” on Circle Round. We played Minecraft. We then ate cauliflower and pizza for lunch outside. We ran back inside when it started raining. We watched some more Carmen, but it was starting to have problems. We cleaned up the wrapping paper by crumpling it and throwing it in the box. He asked, “Dada, why do trapezoids get to have nice, even non-irrational areas?” He was looking up at the math formulas I’d written on paper. He did some more piano, coming up with cool chromatic licks. We read the instructions for the crystal night light, but decided not to start yet; we need a big jar. Maybe when the pickle jar is empty.
We then did a big game with Ms. Safe with her having the kids “recitaling”, that is, preparing for a music recital. Through the day they would get crazier and crazier, both the amount of practice and how long the recitals lasted, but also the expectations for how many instruments and pieces they would learn, and whether they could stop for the bathroom or to sleep.
He popped some of the bubble wrap, then we did some of the Brilliant course on Python and using and reading Caesar cyphers. Plethora was a word of the day. He then did a couple levels in Swift Playgrounds, writing his first function. We went back to the Ms. Safe game, doing an even longer recital, then he was asking about the bedrock breaking in Minecraft so we watched a video of someone (Xisuma, I think) showing how to do it. He then did alone time on the piano.
He played the C Super Locrian and F Super Locrian together. He noted that they sounded good together and were a fourth apart. He said it made them sound “Major” but I’m not sure what he meant by that.
We played Minecraft, then did piano time. Started on practicing “Fairy Flight” but he doesn’t really want to learn the left hand part for some reason. Switched to Piano Maestro and he moved up into level three on that. He commented, “Timing 100%? 14 out of 14? That’s crazy!” He had some crackers and peanut butter. We then did a Brother with him hiding cats in his Minecraft game.
Carly was down at 4:20. She’s had a stiff neck. August massaged her neck a bit and said, “This is the first time I massaged you.” They did lesson time with Vivian and Colin, learning about the body, and I went up to work. August did blood. Vivian did organs, I think. August then cashed in his 5 stars and played Minecraft with Carly. He had noodles and broccoli for dinner. I came down, then August and I headed up and did another crazy Ms. Safe recital up on the bed. Back downstairs Carly then called Vivian and Colin to read them a story. Vivian got upset when Colin wasn’t sharing the computer though and left. Carly read the Grace Hopper book to August and Colin.
Carly went upstairs for a shower. August played with pasting and typing text on my iPad. He got to the 900000 character limit. We had only gotten through about 45 minutes of Carmen today, unfortunately. Our internet speeds have been horrendous and we couldn’t stream video. Video chat seems to work okay, but watching videos or even doing August’s podcasts at bedtime has been difficult.
August asked about finger snapping, so we watched a slo-mo snapping video and another video of normal things in slow motion. We watched the latest Grian Hermitcraft video and cahoots was a word of the day. He then came up with a new paradox, arguing that a circle should be impossible, since if there are an infinite amount of sides that the left turns should infinitely small; basically, that turning should be impossible. He realized that it was a version of Xeno’s Paradox.
I did dishes. He told me about his mob farm in a jungle in Minecraft. We went upstairs and said good night to Carly. He describes his equation to find the area of any polygon and talked about wanting to move both hands on piano. I gave him a bath. In bed we listened to two episodes of Stories Podcast: “In Your Dreams” and “Extra Scoops!” He liked that as a news show, so we subscribed to that as well. He went to the bathroom, then we listened to “Triceratops” from Bedtime Explorers. It was 10:10. Followed that up with Philip Glass, and he was asleep between 10:30 and 11 again.
Lunch outside:
Cleaning up paper and listening to Carmen:
Practicing a new lick:
Programming with Swift Playgrounds:
Humming along with his playing:
Playing the jinx game with Stories Podcast:
