He woke up kind of early, at 8:25. I read a few Sideways Stories from Wayside School, then we went and played Minecraft in survival. We had oatmeal for breakfast, then he drew ‘magazine alphabetizing’ from the basket. Carly had cleaned up though, and I couldn’t find the magazine and notebook, so we skipped that and he drew ‘Khan Academy’. We found the ‘Getting Ready for 4th Grade’ math course, which seems to be kind of a review of the 3rd grade standards. Worked quite well, as he didn’t have to answer so many questions per standard. He worked through the place value and number representation section pretty easily. His learning is mainly about how they ask questions.
He drew ‘Reversi’, and we played battleship, chess, and reversi. He next drew ‘Edu videos’ and we watched a video about aphids and their candy poop, then a Little Richard video Cherie had sent. When August thought that video wasn’t real (it didn’t help that the video and audio weren’t working right) I showed him a video of Little Richard playing when he was older. We played War for a while, then he drew ‘Treat’. He was choosing one as Carly got home. She went up to take a shower. He did alone time, first improving on “Ice Crystals”, then listening to the Circle Round story “The Ant and the Billy Goat”.
We played in his chaos world with the big phantoms. I liked the add-on, but he and Vivian had spawned so many mobs that it was unplayable to me. The groceries arrived, and I cleaned them and he started helping with bringing in groceries. But he stopped when he was talking about resetting the nether in our survival world and I let him know that it turned out to be harder than I thought. He was upset, but then sad on the couch with Carly. Eventually he calmed down, and watched me work on troubleshooting it, editing files on my phone to see if I could figure it out. Sort of worked, but also caused problems.
He then went upstairs to “take a nap” with Carly. I went up to check on him, and he was paying chess on her computer. I brought him lunch: last of the gnocchi, scramble, grapes and nectarine. He really liked having all of the choices for lunch. Rena, the yoga teacher, called to talk to Carly, then he watched me work on the Minecraft issue more. He then drew ‘coding’ and we worked on Swift Playgrounds. We worked on variables, and counting how many gems the robot picked up. Incremental was a word of the day.
He went outside with Carly, and she taught him cribbage. I went upstairs to work, from 5:30 to 7:45. Our rehearsal for the Zoom session took a long time. When I was done I came down and Josh Ritter was playing loudly. I asked why, and August said, “You know I don’t like the silence.” He told me, “Also, I have a secret I’m keeping from you…but it’s okay because you do it naturally…okay, I’ll tell you: we’re tricking you into being a servant.” The Josh Ritter song came on that Carly has as a ringtone “If this was a Cold War…” and August joked, “Is someone calling?” Carly was out talking to Cherie, who had called right after they had all finished up their Minecraft time, so Carly had given August a few extra minutes.
She came in and they played cribbage. He had already developed some new rules: the crib carried over from hand to hand, getting bigger each time, and he added an element of chance, as they drew for high card each time to see who gets it.
They had popcorn and I went for a run. They were doing Gravity Maze and did an intermediate puzzle, which August came up and told me about before I got in the shower. I took a shower, then came down and he was listening to “The Wylderwood: Part 2”. He switched to “Thunder, Lightning, and Rain”. After that we went up and he had a bath. He chose a “combination” of clothes, then demanded crackers. I got crackers, but sat out on the couch while he listened to “The Magpie with Salt on Her Tail”. When that was over though he came out and said “I love you” in ASL. That was really sweet. He spent a long time going to the bathroom, then we brushed our teeth. Back in bed he did an internet speed test, and had me look up jitter, in an electronics sense. He said, “Our internet speed is unpredictable.”
We discussed Shmorgadeboop after bringing up the missing tortoise in Minecraft, which we had named “Shmorgadeturle” but had vanished from the top of the post it was on. That led to a discussion of the real cat, then of allergies.
We listened to the _Trance Frendz _album again, and despite being up kind of earlier this morning he still didn’t get to sleep until 11:45 or so.
Explaining the code:
Program overrun:
Piano time:
