He was down just before 9 and came down all on his own and “boo”-ed me. Luckily I had heard him coming. While I started to open a book to read he went and started playing “Hacked” on the piano. He was still having some difficulty adding in the base line, but after a couple minutes of coaching he got it down. He was then improving and played a few notes that sounded like “The Streets or Cairo” so I played that for him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_riff?wprov=sfti1).
We then played Minecraft, splitting our time in two worlds. August discovered Frost walker boots and was having fun with those. We had pancakes for breakfast and ate outside. We went I side and were going to do Minecraft Math but the Apple Pencil was up in the office where Carly was teaching. We did Earpaggio instead, then he was composing in Notion. He was learning his rest lengths, so that was cool.
I got the Apple Pencil and we did Minecraft Math. He wanted to do a bigger pyramid, so we did that. I added in the challenge of building the largest cube possible using the blocks from the pyramid. He spent a long time figuring that out.
Carly came down for lunch as I was making ours. We had a yellow lunch: pizza, corn, and canned pineapple. He jokingly snuck onto his iPad and said, “Nothing. I’m not doing anything.” He was totally copying Carly, including her tone. We ate lunch together, and I ended up teaching him some German words and a German accent, which he had fun with.
He next did alone time: a little piano, listened to a Two Whats‽ and a Wow! episode in which he learned that lobsters have teeth in their stomachs and pee out of their eyes, and then a short StoryNory where we learned about how Herodotus described the animals of ancient Egypt. He then had brother participating in a Two Whats and a Wow in which the truth was that trees can whistle.
We played Minecraft, playing in our survival world, listening to KidNuz and NASA and But Why? We mined diamonds. We ended up with an odd number, 19 I think, and he said an even number would be better, but then I said it was cool because it was prime. I realized he didn’t really know what that meant, so we learned about prime and composite numbers, starting withhttps://youtu.be/jpMYfW9XziU
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I then got him out on a recycling walking. Which went fine until I was almost done recycling and the wind picked up and he started getting upset and insisting we go back because it could rain. I was able to finish up, then we hurried home. He played piano and had his chocolate bar snack. We discussed hand positions and started to learn the next part of “Hacked”. When he was hungry he had some peanut butter and honey crackers.
At 4 he had a meeting with Gabi via Zoom. We used my iPad and he was up on his bed. August wanted me there as well, but I ended up spending much of the time sitting out on the couch. They started by looking at a series of pictures with kids in them. The pictures told little stories and August was given points for describing the story, naming emotions he saw, and offering solutions if there was a problem. That went really well and they spent more than half of the time on that. When he was describing a kid that looked mean August said he looked like “Darth Vader, you know, Star Wars.” Gabi heard “sour” and repeated that a few times. August ran with it though and called it “very lemony.” When Gabi asked, “How does it feel when you have to accept something you don’t like?” he said, “Disappointed.” For another picture, which I did see, Gabi asked, “What’s one solution?” “Cut the ball in half.”
When he was done with his three crackers and peanut butter he said he was still hungry and I got him a bowl of Cheerios and he munched on those the rest of the meeting. It was like he hadn’t had breakfast and lunch. When they were done with that Gabi showed him a list of online games. August first wanted chess, but agreed on checkers since they didn’t have enough time, but then changed his mind: “No winning games!” So they switched to Tanks, where you try to hit the other tank with the right angle/force of a shot. He liked the physics of it. They went a full session, then said goodbye.
We went downstairs to the piano. Carly came down and he showed her everything he had learned and more. I got ready for a run. First time in shorts, although I could have been in shorts for the last few runs. When I came back he and Vivian and Colin were doing Minecraft. Carly had been talking with Vivian and August about how to handle disagreements in it before I left. That worked well. I took a shower, ate dinner, and went up to work for a while. They finished Minecraft, and I think also read Stick Dog. I came down at 8:20.
He went to the bathroom, and claimed sounds only fade beyond human hearing but never actually vanish (he referred to an asymptote): “I detected the first cave man talk and amplified it and translated it to human language. It said, ‘Kill that bear!’”
He had a second bowl of nutty noodles, then we watched a couple of videos about money, as he had asked, at bedtime last night, what makes it valuable: Ted-Ed and Kurzgesagt. He asked, “What’s an enigma?” A word of the day. He then saw Carly’s screensaver and stared at it, saying, “I’m mesmerized.”
We went upstairs and he spent a long time on the toilet. When he got off he had a static-y foot. We talked about it, and he said it has happened a couple times when he wakes up. Carly took over and washed him. He was being pretty hyper. In bed he asked, “What’s AI?” We read part of How To, finished the chapter about getting elected and starting the next. Pander was a word of the day. We then listened to both parts of “The Druid’s Harp” on Stories Podcast, then the episode about black holes on Peace Out. He requested Beethoven’s Second, so we listened to that. We’re gradually moving bedtime, as he was asleep by 11:10.
Progress so far on “Hacked”:
Time with Gabi:
Progress on “Hacked”:
