Author: Ryan/Dada

He was up about 7:55. I went up and he had laid on the couch, his head under the blanket. We went downstairs and read a few poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends before switching to Minecraft, our survival world. When he went to the bathroom he said he had taught Carly that e isn’t a variable. He had learned more about it on one of the VSauce videos he had watched yesterday. He then sand an “x times x to the power of x” song.

We played Minecraft, then he had oatmeal and watched the VSauce video on the Birthday Paradox. He played a little piano, singing along to the notes he was playing, then switched to the synth app for more music. We had a Brother game with the ugly goose being indestructible. I think it was ‘imperishable’ that I used that August asked what it meant. A word of the day.

He did graphing and figured out how he could do diagonal crossing lines two different ways, applying the absolute values to either x or y. I was amazed by a graph he was able to make and he replied, “What? It’s just complex calculus.”

I tuned the guitar and he played that. He played Yankee Doodle in D sharp. Hungry, so he had a strawberry yogurt. Randomly he asked, “How does humanity make these things? Like this house?…It just seems impossible.” He did more guitar playing and was figuring out the pattern of how notes repeat, as well as octaves. We continued the Brother and Sister games with Bar trying to destroy the ugly goose, and with her breaking Pluto with a strong rock thrown at it at light speed. Humans then panic, and think she is planning to destroy Earth. I had a TV reporter keep exaggerating what she said and August was getting hilariously frustrated for her.

As we got going to school August said, about something, “Better safe than sorry…like that folk tale…” He was remembering Icarus flying too close to the sun.

At school we went and got Eve, then Zoe. We talked to Heather and August told her all about antibodies for her fact. On the way out to the car he found a chocolate coin on the ground and gave it to a nest of ants. On the way to VIPizza he was telling Eve and Zoe all about division and multiplication and exponential growth. We ordered a half-corn/half=olive pizza. They each got a juice pouch and I got an iced tea. August said there was something in it, and indeed there was: A big blob of mold or…something. It had a white center part that almost looked like an orange seed or something. Luckily, I didn’t open it. I told the pizza guy about it and got another one.

Pizza came and August talked about the bubbles in it, and sang: “I love you cave. I’m gonna munch you up. I’m gonna eat you up…I’m a germ, I’m a germ, I’m a germ…” He and Eve stopped first, at one slice each, and kind of wandered around a bit. August started drumming on things and said, “I want a drum kit. To keep my rhythm.”

We left there at 1. Had totally meant to then get strawberries, but forgot until after we were home. Eve and Zoe wanted to go to the park, but August had really wanted to show them Sprouts. So the plan was to stop at home for paper, etc. then go up to the park. When we got here though Zoe and August started playing piano and Eve started taking care of the baby. He tried to show them sprouts, but that didn’t last long.

He and Eve took care of the baby and asked Zoe to play quietly. A bit later he played piano and said, “Sorry if that disturbed the baby.” Zoe found the microscope and they were all using that. August realized they weren’t getting things really focused and made it better. At one point he said, “Stop, stop. Don’t give up. I know how to focus it.”

We finally got going to the park. I took the microscope in a bag, as well as my sweatshirt as August wanted a blanket there. August pushed Eve on the red bike and Zoe took the balance bike. At the park August wanted to work on his paper blanket for the baby and I realized I’d forgotten the markers/tape/paper. He was fine with me running back to get them. When I came back he had the sweatshirt out and had it over his head. He pretended to walk into me, then put the sweatshirt over me. He was then working on his blanket, but the wind picked up, blowing papers away from him. He was saying, “I hate it! I hate everything! Oh my goodness!” I helped him grab everything.

They kept playing. They climbed on the play structure, all went up on the pirate ship, and pushed Eve around in the bike. They were hauling the baby around, supposedly taking care of it but dropping it a lot and sliding it down the slide. August and Zoe played with the microscope for quite a while, and Eve and I went over to the exercise equipment area. At one point August needed to go to the bathroom and Zoe said she was fine staying with Eve. August and I started to go, but then had him pee in the bushes and surprised them by being back so quickly.

Eventually we headed back to the house. I made snacks, cutting up some halva for them, making crackers and peanut butter, slicing an apple, and opening the dried apricots. It all disappeared.

They were outside for a bit, then all went upstairs and were taking care of the baby and each other. They came back downstairs for a little Candyland and August was being driven crazy by the Old MacDonald song thing. They went back upstairs and Zoe was a teacher, teaching how to use a microscope. August was a baby. A little later I heard him tell Zoe that he can’t spell his name. Need to work on that.

Carly got home and they all went outside for a while. They made a sort of fort area under the slide with the pillows, then there was a lot of yelling when they found a big green spider by his house. I took photos, then got it on a stick and dropped it over the fence. A bit later August asked, “Is the arachnid gone?”

Heather got here a bit after 4. August told Heather more facts, after telling her all about antigens earlier, and stayed out in the yard yelling goodbye to them as they left.

Back inside he did his alone time, playing some piano, then cuddling next to/behind us as Carly and I talked about using Comic Life with her class. August and Carly started to make a comic about poop, then he remembered Minecraft. August played 15 minutes of Minecraft with her, then me. He never did his second round today. Skipped around on educational videos before settling on the VSauce one about a missing dollar. We watched that as we ate nutty noodles.

We then watched an Odd Quartet video about minor scales. Once we understood what a melodic minor scale was he went to the piano to learn it. He showed off to Carly. He is getting some crazy fast fingers.

He taught Carly how to play the “First Serenade” piece, then he switched to his iPad and Notion and recorded one of the fast pieces he’s been playing on the piano. He kept recording a few other things and I found a promising app called Notes Trainer for practicing sight reading.

They did some math together, watching some Khan Academy on slopes of lines and doing story problems together, turning them into equations. He was then graphing, figuring out now how to get individual dots to bounce around: “Dot circus.”

Carly was watching teaching videos and he watched with her as they ate artichoke and spaghetti. She then took him up for a bath. I did dishes. I came up and read How to to him on the couch bed, finishing the chapter on making a swimming pool. He went to the bathroom and asked why multiplying by a decimal makes a smaller number. We went through that and kept going to why dividing by a fraction is actually multiplying. He ran with it and understood that dividing by a decimal would make it bigger.

As we went back in the bedroom he said, “Here’s à problem with the word sorry: you never know if someone means it. But anyway, who cares about it? I’m being a dumb guy.”

We listened to the Stories Podcast story “Belly of the Beast”, then listened to the second Bedtime Explorers meditation. August interjected with a couple of random things, like “The chromatic scale has 13 notes…” And said it had the 8 notes of the C scale plus the pentatonic scale on the black keys, for a total of 13.

When I asked what kind of music he wanted to listen to as he went to sleep he said ukulele music, as that’s what Zoe plays. There had been an elementary school talent show today that we missed because I didn’t know about it. She had played a song in it. I put on the album Ukulele Songs by Eddie Vedder. He heard a few songs before falling asleep at 10:30.

X to the power of X song:

A piano song:

Microscope with Zoe:

Riding bikes to the park:

Being driven bonkers:

A nice piano line:

Another fast one:

Playing piano with Carly:

Crazy dots graphing:

He woke up at 7:25. I went up and he was still in bed. I lay down on the lower bed and he kept rolling around in bed. After 15 minutes or so he said, “I can’t sleep.” He finally got up at 7:55 and headed downstairs. He asked, “Dada? Do you hear a mini slime on the roof?” The dripping from the rain sounded like a slime in Minecraft. We read some poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends. He then jokingly asked if you could train the dragon in Minecraft. That led to him singing the “Chickens everywhere” song that we had come up with some time ago.

We played Minecraft, and the glitches persist. More holes through the bedrock AND he saw a second cloud bit falling, close to where the first one is. I’ve searched, and I haven’t found any reference to anyone else experiencing this falling cloud bug.

We had breakfast (oatmeal) and then did music time. He played with the synth and I finished the piano tuning. Woohoo! I’m sure I’ll be going back and doing spot tunings, and update it in a couple weeks, but it sounds pretty good and seems to work just fine. We then did music class with Ms. Safe. Did a little sight reading (treble clef and rests), and worked a little on his piece.

He then went to graphing and was working on equations based off of the circle equation, and turning it into art. Very cool. I made schnitzel and a strawberry smoothie for lunch and we read about the most powerful supercomputers after August had been talking about them. flops was a word of the day. He had an imagining game with a Minecraft competition between sister and Myna. Myna, of course, won, and August spent a lot of time listing everything she made: “A city made out of parrots…a pool made out of cats…”

We got driving to his piano lesson. We listened to the Fat Boy Slim song “Praise You”. He asked why the guy was singing “praise you like a shoe.” Which it does rather sound like. He then asked what praise means, so word of the day.

Piano went really well. Walking in we talked about needing to not play too loud, holding his hands the right way, etc. I thought there’d be some push back, but he said he was fine with that. During the lesson they looked at the piece he has been working on, then they worked on two new pieces: “Bluebird” and “First Serenade”. They talked about sight reading, and it was really cool to see him working on sight reading a new piece, and figuring it out. He also asked about the forte/piano scale. When he asked if those (pppp to ffff) were all of the volume things she mentioned other marks (I think she meant like crescendo, etc.). She looked for a sheet/page for him but it was just in Hebrew, but said she’d get it in English for next week. And at the end she asked what I thought about moving to 45 minute lessons starting next week, as he was doing fine and she felt they had more they could do. So that was cool, especially how I didn’t know how things would go after last week’s lesson. So we’ll do 45 minutes next week.

We walked over to the park. He had a bar and a cat walked up to us. August was convinced it wanted his bar and was getting a bit panicky about it. He went up on a play structure but it followed him. I told him to go on the round swing. I had to carry him over, but that worked. The cat sat on the ground near us for quite a while then got bored with us. August told me that he had learned “XP” for “experience” from Phineas Rage. We did Brother and Sister games, with Brother’s cat reserves going out of control and Bar couldn’t keep up. They would get too big and she would reset time. Wasn’t clear if this was in their Minecraft or real world.

We then drove into town and parked in the paved lot. We first went to the ATM, then went down to the health food store. August wanted halva so we got a slice, along with pistachios and a small container of mixed nuts. They were out of cashews. We then went to Stop City and got a few things. Including soy milk, as August said it was better for the environment. We walked over to the round picnic table and had the halva and my iced coffee and some pistachios. As part of the Brother and his cats game we were coming up with crazy names for all of his billions of cats, like Fluffy Nuffy, Bringer of Doom, etc.

Carly called, asking if we could get cheese for her. We walked to the other grocery store but they didn’t have the right kind. So we went back to Stop City and got the cheese and some dried apricots for when Zoe and Eve are over tomorrow.

For all the extra time wandering around town I gave him 7 and a half minutes of free Minecraft time when we got home. He then did alone time, on the piano. We identified three keys that could be better tuned, so I did those when he was done. It only took a minute, and he was surprised it was so fast. We played Minecraft. August was trying to destroy a portal and couldn’t. He said, “It can’t be destroyed. Like Lord of the Rings.” I was surprised he knew about Lord of the Rings. Eventually he told me it was from Last Kids on Earth.

Carly got home, and when August was done he watched a VSauce video about a game involving placing tetra pieces and pennies on a board.

He ate three bowls of nutty noodles as we watched the launch of the Solar Orbiter. August wanted to play SimpleRocket so he played that as we watched more of the broadcast. We moved to the couch and I showed him a video called “Calculus at a Fifth Grade Level” It was a pretty good intro to the thinking in calculus. At the end the teacher made a pun and August caught it, saying, “Ha. Infinity.” And as he was playing with the calculator he told me, “I like to experiment with algebra. It’s nice.”

I started to do some math time with him, talking about solving for X, but first he got caught up in a series of rhyming words that he had to share with Carly, then expand. We then used Paper to work on solving for X.

I then got him upstairs. While trying to get him to go take a bath with Carly I joked about how slow I am compared to her, and was then an announcer announcing the slowest bath in the world as if it were a 24 hour race. He thought that was pretty funny.

Carly gave him a bath. He was playing in the sink first, and he told Carly that there was a straw in the faucet. She didn’t believe him at first, and asked me. It happened a few months ago, but since it didn’t seem to affect the flow we forgot about it. She was able to get it out with tweezers.

They went in the bedroom and read, I think, part of the Astrophysics book and Clementine. When we switched, he was bored and said, “I need something to think about.”

We went in to his bedroom. I asked him if he remembered waking up last night, and he said one time was when he had woken up and couldn’t get back to sleep. He told me something along the lines of it being horrible to wake up in the middle of the night, and he feels bad about calling me because he thinks I’ll be upset. I assured him it was always okay.

We started reading a new book, inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, called Emperor of the Universe: A Fable with Spaceships and Aliens by David Lubar. The main character lives in Washington. Reign was a word of the day.

Carly came in and said good night, then we listened to the Stories Podcast story “Who Guards the Gourdsmen?” For a mediation we listened to a new podcast, called Bedtime Explorers, listening to the episode called “Rainbow”. August liked her. We had lights off at 10, and when the meditation was over I put on Philip Glass’s _Koyaanisqatsi_soundtrack. He was asleep by 10:20.

Lots of destruction in Minecraft:

A tuned piano:

Piano lesson 1:

Piano lesson 2:

His rhyme:

He was up about 7:45. We went downstairs and he cuddled under the blankets for a few minutes. I then read some Where the Sidewalk Ends poems. He got his iPad for Minecraft, but spent time graphing. He’s a entered a new realm of creating graphs based on the circle equation (x^2+y^2=1). He made one that looked like a bow tie (using absolute value) and now can add the product multiplier (capital pi) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication?wprov=sfti1) to a graph and have it work.

We had a good learning time figuring out why his function “the x root of x” looks how it does, it when he wanted to figure out summation it was more frustrating, as he just wanted to kept putting in random things everywhere and didn’t want to start with the basics.

He compared a function (x going in and and getting changed) to a character in a game getting upgrades or something.

At some point he told me I could tune the piano, and that became an activity throughout the day. He watched, then requested the tuner so he could play the synthesizer and mess with it. I installed the app on his phone and he spent quite a while playing music and creating new sounds. Hertz was a word of the day from that.

I made us a tuna melt and chocolate milk for lunch. He only ate half of his sandwich, which led to an early dinner. Omar called me to discuss planning, and I’m going to go down next Tuesday as Carly is off of work. August and I watched a video on semitomes and tones, learning they are just other names for half and whole step, after he saw semitone in the synth app. But good words of the day.

He did his alone time. Some piano, but he also created a sort of hiding fort on the couch today, hiding things under the blanket. It accumulated more and more stuff through the day. We played Minecraft, then watched a VSauce video called “The Dot Game that Will Blow Your Mind” (or something like that). The Yoda part was hilarious, and August loved the game. We then played with the game a lot, drawing it both on paper and on the iPad. Of course, not against each other, but he would draw through games, and he’d have me do it. He wanted me to do it as the class in the Brother and Sister games, but that was a bit too much.

At some point I brought down the guitar after August was talking about de-tuning a piano string for fun. I said he couldn’t do that, but he could on the guitar. Figuring out scales and songs. Made up a couple things that he had me record, and was also figuring out things like Yankee Doodle. I got the piano tuned up past middle C. Steady progress. August was paying attention to what I was doing and noticed when a note went in tune. I think he described it as the note not being “fuzzy” anymore. I’d like to finish a first tuning today, but don’t think it will happen. Maybe tomorrow. He was also figuring out how to dampen the strings.

I tried to get him outside at one point. It had looked like it was going to be a nice day today, but after being sunny in the morning it got rainy and was kind of miserable for the rest of the day.

He had me open the chord lookup app for guitar and was looking up crazy chords, and then had fun detuning some of the strings. He was hungry early, so had a bowl of nutty noodles around 4. And then a second bowl. Carly got home. He was going a little frantic at one point—not a lot of time spent getting the energy out today. He did alone time and was also a little frustrated that the piano was out of tune—the tuned piano reached up into the middle of where he usually plays.

I went for a run and they played Minecraft in the flat world. When I got back he was watching the VSauce video on the game Battleship. They then read the new Clementine book. Carly went and took a shower.

He played piano and was comparing things he would play to his toy piano. He told me how to calculate his rocket ship speed if we had infinite power. He was hungry, and had crackers and peanut butter, then more crackers and peanut butter. We started listening to another episode of Earworms, this time the episode on how we sense time.

I got him upstairs pretty easily, as he followed me up when I took up the blankets and iPads. But then upstairs he hid on the bed, then under the fuzzy blanket, like he had said he would hide from Carly. Eventually though we lured him into the bathroom and Carly washed his hair. I did dishes and tuned more of the piano. It went much faster now that I have the process down and when August was down here. I only have 21 notes to do tomorrow. I think they read a little more of Clementine.

I went up and we headed until his room. We read a little of Apollo, then put on a Stories Podcast story, “The Biggest in the World”. We next put on the last Andy Hobson meditation, “The Keeper of Dreams”. August tapped me when it was over as I had fallen asleep. I put on the first Beethoven string quarter, and he was asleep by 9:30.

A cool animated graph:

A dissonant piece:

Tuner freak out:

Playing sprouts:

Falling animated graph:

Playing guitar 1:

Playing guitar 2:

I went upstairs just after 8 and managed to get him up at 8:20. Downstairs I read Where the Sidewalk Ends. He then watched a Phineas Rage video for part of his time, then we did a little Minecraft. For educational videos he watched the Kurzgesagt milk video, then the Mars base one, again. It is one his favorites, and he talked about how he was going to build a rocket to Mars. He paused to go to the bathroom, and asked me, “How do you make cheese?” And asked why does it taste different. But when I suggested we look it up, he wanted to get back to the Mars base video.

He had a slice of French toast, then, still hungry, a bowl of oatmeal a while later. He did alone time on the piano, playing scales in more keys and transposing his songs. We played Minecraft. We were protecting villagers and he called me “Agent dada.” I got us ready to go and we headed to school. Raining slightly as we left, but August didn’t really hesitate. Raining a bit harder by school and I told him we could wait until he was ready. He was brave about it and let us walk in.

There was supposed to be a nature reserve tour at 10:50 and we were a couple minutes late. August let us walk over there, as perhaps tour would be happening in the yurt. As we got close I said I didn’t see anyone in it, nor did we see or hear anyone in the nature reserve. August immediately headed back.

We headed to the library, where I found the third Last Kids on Earth book. We sat in the back right corner on the bean bag chairs and started reading it. August made a little fort out of the umbrella and our other items as I read. ]Ms. Ilana came in with a class. We were probably fine but decided to head out to the chess area. But once out there August decided to head over to lunch. Checked out the book and walked over. We walked into the cafeteria and August declared it too busy.

We went over to Carly’s classroom. August stuck his head in, but Carly was meeting with Tom. He was very cute and giggly until Carly came to the door and said we could come in. August was telling Carly rhymes, and said, “There’s not a chance, I’ll see it in advance.” “What’s advance mean?” We stayed for a few minutes and August got comfy on a bean bag, then we said goodbye and headed to the cafeteria. No lines now, so we got a lunch of salmon, rice, and corn. We never thought to come back later for a coffee and muffin.

We went to the far end of the long tables, which aren’t labeled for classes (other tables say 5A, etc.) and ate. As we were close to being done, Eve’s kindergarten teacher came in the door behind us and came right up to me and said, “You have to move. This is where kindergarten sits.” No sorry, or please or thank you in either words or tone. I couldn’t believe it.

August had eaten most of the lunch. We went out the main entrance and I finished off the lunch. We saw Zoe then, and August didn’t recognize her, I think because of her knitted pink hat. We hadn’t seen Eve with her class.

We went back to the library and read more. When Ilana came in with an older, and louder, class we stayed. August then switched to the calculators. He took me over to the legos on the wall and showed me how he could do an area for mule for them. We did some crazy problems where we would then round the answer, then calculate backwards to see how off it became. At one point he told me, “The 88th root of pi is 1…if you round.” I already read him some riddles for a book on the shelves.

A little before 12:50 we headed down to Mandy’s classroom for the next session, where 6th graders were supposed to present on human impacts on the Earth, then we were supposed to turn an old shirt into a reusable bag. We were a few minutes early, and she had students in there, so we decided to stay outside until classes came. August spent about ten minutes giving me a tour of the orchard area and what he remembers from visiting it in preschool. We never saw anyone go in the room, and when I peeked in again it looked like they might have been working on shirts.

So we bailed on that one as well. We went back to the library, where August had me play a full game of chess against myself. He took photos and videos. We also watched the 3D printer at work and checked on it a couple times. Eventually we got going. Didn’t worry about the final session (planting in the butterfly garden). Too cold and a bit rainy again, if it even happened.

We picked up the Amazon box on our way out. It included the piano tuning kit and the game of tiddly winks. At home we first opened those and tried to play. Kind of fun, but neither of us could get them to really jump in the air.

I started tuning the piano. Definitely seems doable, although hard when someone keeps playing the piano. I did a few of the lower keys though, and by the evening would have about 12 notes sounding okay. August played more piano, and was coming up with a dissonant pattern that he liked. He called it part of his “Abstricity”, as he called it: his abstractness. He had had a Brother game where he meets a girl that really hates germs, and of course Brother is all germy. We then did music time. He wanted me to be Ms. Safe, teaching the class, and we sat at the piano and used it and Paper to cover time signatures, note lengths, and started on some sight reading. It was a good start.

He did some composing in Notion, then I let him watch a couple videos about changes in the upcoming Minecraft release and we ate crackers and meat. He then did more composing on Notion and showed me his favorite. We hooked up the keyboard and he kept playing for his alone time.

We played Minecraft, and he randomly asked, “What’s degradation mean?” From one of his videos, I think. Carly came home, rather late, and when we were done we had nutty noodles for dinner. They were doing math together, focusing on calculating the percentages of things. She cooked an artichoke and they did more math as they ate it together. He did more graphing and said, “I added on to this one significantly.” Carly had yesterday said it had been her dream to have a child who said “appropriately” when he said it about something.

I went out on a run. Stopped when it got too rainy. Carly said it had been hard to get him upstairs. He was just on the edge. He had requested Cheerios before he went up, then wanted oatmeal, etc. She managed though, and when I got home they were finishing up his bath. They read Comic Science: Solar System and then watched a video involving the sun being the size of a basketball on a What if? channel that she found. She got him more Cheerios as I took over. He talked about squishing a tall cylinder and how that would change the X and Y lengths of it. I then introduced the Z axis.

We listened to “The Werewolf at the Inn” on Stories Podcast. He asked “Why are things blurry?” when you move your hand quickly. We talked about some of the limits of sight and discussed blind spots, a word of the day. Sort of early, so after he went to the bathroom I introduced him to a new podcast, Ear Snacks, about kids and music and the world. He really liked the episode on “Tempo!” I asked what music he wanted to listen to and he agreed on Benge. I put on his Forms 2 album and August took quite a while and fell asleep about 10:20.

More progression and the head turn:

Excited about surprising mama:

The 3D printer:

Funny eyes:

Me playing chess:

Zinnie Cam: discussing chess:

A tour of the orchard area:

Graph craziness:

Piano stuff:

Playing his composition:

He called me in about 4:30 to put his blanket back on. I woke him up at 8:10. He had rolled down to the lower bed. When I woke him and said let’s go down to the couch he gave a confused, “Huh? The couch? Yeah.” I carried him down to Carly, and he was smiling as he cuddled with her even as his eyes were closed. She then read Clementine’s Letter.

He played Minecraft with me. Carly made a list and went to the store. He played a little piano: he found a mixolydian scale and was discussing intervals, like perfect and augmented fifths. We had French toast for breakfast. Carly got home. He showed her graphs, trying to fool her on which ones he had made and which he hadn’t. We discussed the sessions for Earth Day tomorrow. He joked (I think), “Human impact on the environment? There’s no human impact.”

We did some Baby Sister and Bar games with Baby Sister having hidden bases on Pluto etc. And Bar somehow had her DNA changed so that she would be nice to Ms. Nice. It didn’t last very long.

Carly and August started to figure out drawing in Desmos. And we found out that he knows two ways to draw circles. He calls r=something the cheating way, and the more complicated x^2+y^2=1 way the real way. He was hungry so had some yogurt. He played more piano and was showing off for me so I could take a video at his request. I read http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2626 to him after he asked why 144^0 equals 1. He was hungry so ate the rest of the sushi from yesterday and I read How to. He was still hungry so I made oatmeal. August speculated on how big of a sphere you would make if you took all of the living material off of Earth and made a sphere. I argued it wouldn’t be too big, compared to the Earth, at least, and mentioned the whole smooth-as-a-billiard-ball thing. Turns out that isn’t entirely true, and I should read him: https://ourplnt.com/earth-smooth-billiard-ball/

Carly and August headed to Gabi’s. That went well, although I didn’t hear details, except that Gabi said some pun about a foot. They then stopped at the art store to get watercolor paper and brushes for Carly at school, then they went into town and had pizza at VIPizza. The younger guy knew August by name, and when August was drumming on things he complimented him on his drumming. They also dropped the stuff off at school.

They were home just after 3. He was playing piano when I came down a few minutes later. It was his piece that sounded like the Mission iMpossible theme song, and Carly was acting it out. I went back upstairs to keep working but ended up responding to Cherie about birthday presents.

Back down he was eating the avocado sandwich I had made him and Carly was reading Clementine’s Letter. I went back up to work just a little more. When I came down again he was doing alone time. I went upstairs for a few minutes and i heard him ask what hypotenuse and pseudorandom meant. They played Minecraft together. I took over halfway through.

We ate nutty noodles when his time was done. Carly went up to talk to Cherie. August asked me what density is and we discussed it. I then read him this article about FRBs that I had seen: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/wxexwz/something-in-deep-space-is-sending-signals-to-earth-in-steady-16-day-cycles

Carly came down, and he showed Chuck and Cherie his piano playing and Desmos. Telling them something about astronomy he said, “They’re pretty fascinating, don’t you think?” Carly suggested he explain his auditorium equation and he went into teacher mode. He asked for the multiplication blocks to use as a prop. He lined them up, saying, “This is our little auditorium…” He then seemed to get volume, saying “If we add another dimension…” you multiply it by four again, then kept joking, “And if you add another dimension…”

Afterwards we did more of the Bar and Baby Sister games, then he watched a couple of educational videos. The second was the Kurzgesagt video about dying bees That made him want something with honey so I made toast and peanut butter and honey. As he ate Carly almost finished Clementine’s Letter. We then did more Bar and Baby Sister and her bases. He went to the bathroom and, talking about my artistic handwriting on the months poster said, “That looks like ‘months to the power of ‘of’ logarithm ‘the’ times year.”

I got him upstairs. Carly gave him a bath. They were having a good discussion about his skepticism and afterlife, etc. In the bedroom they finished Clementine’s Letter and read some deGrasse Tyson. I took a shower, then put him to bed. We listened to newest Circle Round, “The True Mother”, and he fell asleep to meditation tracks by 10:20.

Modes and chords:

An upward progression:

Another progression:

Another version:

Explaining the area formula:

He was up at 7. He crawled into bed with me for fifteen minutes or so. When he got up to go downstairs I suggested he say something nice to Carly when he went down, instead of shouting “Boo!” He went down and said a nice “Good morning” to her. He spent some time doing math, then they played Minecraft, then read Clementine’s Letter. He played pianos, and I was having him work on his hands a little. He was playing his song that uses a minor key and looking up scales.

He and I then played about ten rounds of Apples to Apples. One of the things we debated was the difference between quick and fast. For arguing why camping was “Favored” he said, “You go with your grandparents and everything.”

He went and looked at the elements poster and said something about it, then said “My eyes are bothering me.” He’d been rubbing them a fair amount this morning. I think most likely allergy-related, with the strong wind outside kicking things up, but the air quality apps don’t give any sign of pollution. They do seem to have been bothering him more often lately, so I talked to him about going to an eye doctor if they keep bothering him. And I gave him a basic eye test, having him read small letters from a distance. He did fine and he said it didn’t bother him.

We read more of What If? and are close to being finished. Cavitates, vacuum, and isolated were words of the day. Carly made us sushi for lunch. As he ate it, with crab, he said, “Past uncle Derek wouldn’t like this.” But it turned out he was thinking more of Jeff. He then asked, “What would happen to uncle Jeff if I trapped him in a jail cell made of meat?…Mutton.”

He did alone time playing the piano, then played Minecraft with me. It is definitely the glitchy world: It is his flat world, and when we logged yesterday there was a square hole in it, through to the void. Then as I was walking I heard an explosion and saw a white block come down. It appeared to be a piece of cloud, larger than a regular block, and we could stand in it. It was still there today, and August spent some time blowing it around with TNT but it wouldn’t be destroyed. Oh, and at night it was still bright, but didn’t light anything up. Then, near the end of our time August teleported to some coordinate out at 10,000,000 blocks. The game then was barely letting him move, and when he spawned some mobs, like witches, they would simply sink through the floor into the void, while other mobs were just fine.

For his educational video he watched the “All the Bombs” Kurzgesagt video, then was talking about how he wants to do negative exponents. We got dressed for a walk, and he told me how he used the Dewey decimal system for art supplies and paint colors.

We all went out for a walk. It was the longest walk he’s ever done, at least here in Even Yehuda, without needing to be picked up. We walked west a block or so, then up north, and to the little triangle park area where someone feeds the cats and there are fruit trees. Carly and I picked some lemons, and he wasn’t happy about that, as he didn’t want us to hurt the fruit trees. He was climbing on a couple of trees, and scared from one tree to another when a dog came along. As we got walking again it was getting cloudier, and August insisted on the most direct route back. Carly tried to take two slightly longer routes and he was having none of it. Then, as we cross the playground he was spooked by our neighbor dog (across the street) which was running free, and I had to carry him the last block home. But he hadn’t complained about having to do any of the walking himself. Pretty sure we’ve left strollers and push bikes behind for good.

At home we were out in the yard for a few minutes. Inside I introduced him to a new YouTube channel I had found, PBS Space Time, and we watched “Will the Universe Expand Forever?” (https://youtu.be/xZTb6sfHEX8) and then “What Happens at the Edge of the Universe?” Parsec was a word of the day.

He started playing piano, and I showed him a video from Pianote called “4 Things a Beginner Piano Player Should Practice”. He played piano for a while, then had Cheerios and milk, followed by peanut butter and crackers. He kept wanting the Brother and Sister peeing stories, which are growing really, really tiring and repetitive, making me do them less and less. We read more of What If? and finished it. Out first full adult nonfiction book, I think.

He played piano for alone time, working on really fast triplet patterns and melodies, then we played Minecraft. For his educational video we watched a VSauce one called “A Problem You’ll Never Solve”, which is about a box-choosing sort of game and the paradox that comes into choosing how to play it. August was pretty captivated by it, and as we played a Brother game he said, “This is called the Fermi paradox.” Carly went for a run, and he ate sweet potato and rice, then had chocolate milk.

He asked, “How does a particle accelerator work?” We watched TED-Ed video (https://youtu.be/G6mmIzRz_f8). He then described making one and explained how it worked. He, as Bar, showed Sister how binary gets father apart between numbers using piano keyboard. He didn’t count exactly the gaps, but had the general idea ( 2 to 4 to 8 etc.)

I finished drawing my music sheets in Paper so I can quickly draw notes of different lengths and pitches for him to practice on the piano. They then started reading the kid version of Neil deGrasse Tyson book _Astrophysics for People in a hurry. He was then making a pillow bridge between the chairs and saying “VSauce!” just because he liked how it sounded.

In the bathroom he found patterns in the months poster (those ending in Y, ER, etc.). He asked me, “How do you spell hi?” He has mistakenly spelled it ‘ih’ a few times, and still doesn’t believe my explanation for how it is spelled.

We got to school a little before 7 for the high school student-run MAD Project art performance. It is a fundraiser for a nonprofit that helps victims of sexual assault. Which led to August being rather confused at the beginning when the CEO spoke.

But first there was a silent auction. August liked looking at the stuff, but he didn’t want us to bid on anything, afraid, it seemed, that we could either lose to someone else, or we would pay way too much. He enjoyed getting a cupcake in an ice cream cone though. As it got crowded and they still weren’t opening the doors Carly went outside and read. August and I wondered around and he spent some time doing photography.

They let us in the auditorium at 7:25. We stayed for most of it. The first piano piece was really good, as were several of the singing pieces. And he liked the dance/gymnastics piece. In the middle though there were a few quieter songs that were nice, but making him sleepy (like Don MacLean’s “Vincent”) so before the second fashion show piece I asked if he wanted to get going, and he did. It was 8:25.

As we walked out he said, “I have a formula for how many chairs…” are in the auditorium, and he went on to explain how you would multiply how many rows there are by how many chairs are in each row.

At home I got him upstairs and doing graphing calculator on the couch bed. He has rounding down quite well. He asked about summation. When Carly took him in to his bath he was sawing things like. “summation notation! I love it!” And, “I just love my math! It’s a math miracle!”

When she brought him in to his room he was first kissing everything upstairs good night, then in bed said, “and last but not least: the crystal.”

We stated reading the next Randell Munroe book How To. The first chapter is on jumping, and as we read it we realized he didn’t know what high jump, pole vault, and ski jumping looked like, so we watched videos of each. He asked what eon meant, from a Kurzgesagt video, and we looked it up. Another word of the day. For a story we listened to Circle Round’s “The Begger and the Baker’s Daughter”. Then a meditation track, followed by a Beethoven sting quartet. He fell right to sleep though (finally) at 10:40.

Humming and copying math:

Knocking the cloud around with TNT:

Talking on our walk:

Climbing the tree and seeing a dog:

Short piano piece:

One of the high school performances:

He called to me at 6:50. He was still in bed. I lay down on the lower bed and he fell back to sleep after a few minutes.He then called down at 8:05. I went up and he was still in his bed. So I lay down and rested as well for a few minutes. When he finally got up he lay back down on the couch bed while I got him clothes. I commented on how he couldn’t resist that soft blanket on it. He said, “If I’m ever punished by mama I’m gonna hide in the carpety blanket. Cuz she hates it. Pretty good kidding trick, right?”

Downstairs I read a lot of Where the Sidewalk Ends and he recorded me with Voice Memos. We then played Minecraft. After about a half hour Gilad called and they played together. August ate oatmeal while they played, and we said goodbye about 9:40. While they were playing August asked me, “What’s for the sake of argument mean?”

We got ready to go and headed down to Herzliya for the next playdate. We were going to the house of Sara, whose husband works for the embassy. They are new this year, and have three girls. One is a second grader, the middle girl is Eliza, who was going to kindergarten, and they have an almost-four-year old name Micah, who goes to a gan. Eliza went to AIS in September but has been homeschooled since. We were supposed to do our homeschooling get together at their house yesterday, but they had to postpone to the 20th, but they invited us over today instead.

So August and I got there about 10:15. August was shy at the door, literally hiding when they opened it, but the youngest, Micah, was instantly inviting, telling him she wanted to show him the play room. Their house is huge, but not necessarily in a good way. Three floors of stairs up, and lots of space to fill and clean. We went up to the play room area and they played around each other as Sara and I talked. They hung off of an exercise bar thing and played with toys like Legos and those magnetic spinny things (I think I remember one of the older style ones from my grandparents’ house or somewhere) and harmonicas (after August asked me to wash it off for him).

Eventually they were getting hungry and we went downstairs. She unrolled a big roll of paper and August and Micah drew on it. August was doing math, then got into scribbling. Eliza was keeping to herself much of the time. We ate at the table though (I had brought tuna sandwiches, yogurt, strawberries, and other things for us), then Micah was being a cat and Eliza and August sort of bonded together as they threw pillows at her to keep her away.

I found out that Eliza had had troubles from the beginning at kindergarten. She was is Allie’s class, then was kicked out the day after she went on maternity leave. They then had to go back to the States (with three kids) to get an ADHD diagnosis (the State Department wouldn’t let them do that in Israel) and she’s been doing quite well on medication.

They then made a sort of fort out of pillows between the couch and the dining table. Sara mentioned using the table for gaming, and I thought she meant with the kids and I mentioned that we got No Thank You, Evil! We started talking about games for kids and wend downstairs to look at their collection. Eliza turned on the TV and August was amazed by its size and analyzed the pixels.

They wanted play Minecraft, and Sara figured out how to play it in split screen and August and Eliza played together in a new world. First, Sara showed us a little of what she had built in a different world. Figuring out the controls was the hard part, but August got it down pretty well. Sara helped Eliza more and they ended up playing together, and really it was more like August was playing with Sara as they started to build a castle together. Micah was a cat for a while, did some drawing, then did ABC Mouse and watched Peppa Pig.

Close to 2 we got going, as Eliza wanted to watch Peppa Pig too (2 was generally when they get to watch). So August and I went back to the car (no rain now) and drove up to school. We were listening to Story Pirates, back on season 3, and finished listening to the end of a story in the car, then we went in. Hadn’t heard back from Minke about when we could drop by, so I figured we’d just drop by. It worked out though, as he had let his class go to some basketball game. He greeted August, who stood shyly by the door again, then did about 25 minutes of an impromptu lesson in instruments and their history. He started with the big long horn, and talked about how it was used to communicate danger, etc. so music is more than just about sounding nice. He then had August play a bugle, then try a trumpet. August got the bugle playing right away and was amazed you could only play three notes. So when Minke showed him the trumpet and explained the valves August saw it as a problem like the cubes in the blocks and said, “Oh, 3 factorial! That’s 6!” It actually isn’t a factorial problem exactly the same (there’s a total of 8 combinations) but I was surprised he thought of it so fast.

At one point, as they were talking, August suddenly got excited and pointed at the signs above the front of the room and said there was math and that those were variables. It was actually the scale of dynamics (a word of the day).

Minke then showed him the bass sax. August was amazed by it: the sound, the size, all the buttons. Minke explained how it was invented by someone named Sax and is the newest of the band instruments. He had me take a photo of August holding it up, and Minke played “Ode to Joy” at August’s request, then played “The Pink Panther”, which August recognized.

August asked if he could do some percussion. He played the bass dram for a minute, then Minke gave him an extra set of marching band gloves showed him the flexitone and let him play it. The bell had rung and we needed to get going. We said thank you and headed out.

We headed over to Carly’s classroom. August walked right in and said, “I’m ready for class, Ms. Althauser” without any prompting from me. Carly was finishing up and wanted a ride. He did some satellite work on a piece of paper, then drew on the smart board, intentionally calibrating it incorrectly so it was off, and scribbling over her “important” work. Carly printed out more music paper for me to use at home.

August was then ready to get going, so he and I walked up and sat in the chairs outside the library. He asked about the Oort Cloud, Kuiper belt, etc. and we had a few minutes to read about them, particularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt?wprov=sfti1

At home he went straight to the piano. He played his chromatic piece for Carly, then was playing things along to the metronome when I put that in front of him. They played Minecraft. I had a headache and took Tylenol and lay down.

When done with Minecraft he watched “All the Bombs”. I then showed him “The Infinity Paradox” on VSauce. Didn’t watch all of it, but we had some good discussion. After we were both confused about why he was calculating a $1 value for each round I was able to pause it and explain it. August wanted to do math so got out his scientific calculator. I helped him under stand the ‘root’ button and why a zero didn’t work in the first position. We then did a Desmos activity called Function Carnival.

I got him dinner of rice and chicken and veggies. He didn’t eat much though, arguing that chicken might, in theory, be too fatty, and skipping the veggies. He spent some time copying equations. I was setting up template pages for music. He took over and did one piece of art on the iPad. He was then rubbing his eyes and told Carly he had had “too much screen time.”

She read Clementine’s Letter. He wanted Cheerios, but agreed to eat frozen strawberries. He had several of those, then Cheerios. I went for a run. Well, that was the plan. Carly had gone out earlier, and now I got all dressed to go. Then there was the rumble of thunder. So no run. The storm really hit, with lightning and wind and a downpour.

Instead, we practiced piano. He learned more of his piece. Once he understood the structure he got the first 12 measures or so. His eyes were still bothering him. He discovered a melodic minor scale again. We need to learn about melodic scales. He has been playing a riff that reminds me of the “Money, Money, Money” line in the song of the same name by Abba, so I played it for him.

Got him upstairs and Carly read to him, then read more of Clementine’s Letter to him while I took a shower. In bed, we listened to the Stories Podcast version of “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”. We listened to the sleep track of the meditation album we’ve been listening to. He talks about your happy place, and I asked what August’s is, and he said “you and mama.” In a meditation about calming your mind he popped up to ask, “Why doesn’t gas station food taste as good?” I then put on the cello album we’ve been listening to and he was asleep by 10:15.

Drawing with a new friend:

Playing Minecraft on the big screen:

Playing the bugle!:

Listening to bass sax:

Some piano improv:

Him sleeping with Carly went fine last night. She said she definitely fell asleep before him, as a couple of times she remembers him saying “I can’t fall asleep.” He was up at 7:50. He lay down on top of the couch bed. I wrapped him in the blankets and he lay there a couple minutes. Downstairs we played in our main survival world in Minecraft. He was talking about one of the animals or something and said, “I just want to keep my baby safe.” I recognized it as something Carly says, and he admitted it. He complained, “It’s just an excuse…to keep me from getting hurt.”

He went and played piano, and played a tune on the piano that he used to play on the toy piano. He ate oatmeal, then did the Bullies-being-chased-away-by-the-piano-music game. We got going, and listened to music on the way down to Ra’anana Park.

We were there right at 9:30. At the entrance he started riding around the left side of the lake. I got a text saying that Lauren and Gilad were at the covered playground, so he rode back over the bridge and we headed over there. The park was full of school groups today. Apparently it is the end of the semester, so there are park outings. This playground was pretty empty at first. August wanted to show them some math, so used the calculator for a few minutes. I then got him off of it and he wanted to play the airplane game. They did that for maybe ten minutes, but then school groups showed up.

We decided to head over to the musical instruments area. They rode over there. Well, August did half way, then decided to walk. But we found a work crew there. They had taken out several of the musical instrument things, like the broken thing you run around and the wooden frog, and seemed to be digging holes for posts for a covered area. Hopefully it will be an improvement. They haven’t taken out all the instruments, so I hope they’ll be fixing things or adding new stuff.

We then continued on to the tractor. They spent most of their time there. It was a spaceship, and they were traveling to different universes, running out of fuel, etc. August asked for the calculator again, and I suggested he work it into the game, so he was calculating distances to other universes and things. Worked well.

We all walked out together a little after 11. We drove back to Even Yehuda and stopped at the strawberry stand. We had listened to an Andy Bell song that he likes on repeat a few times. He came in with me. Strawberries are now 4 packs for 40 shekels. Back in the car we had a big discussion of supply and demand, and why lower prices might be bad for a farmer, and why they might diversify their crops to avoid risk, which led to a discussion of stocks and how we own some and diversification. Stock was a word of the day.

That took us up into town, where we parked in the paved lot. We walked to the small grocery store. Got most of our stuff there, except for veggies and honey. He got a pudding thing and was hungry. We walked to the picnic table near our car and he ate it with a small fork as I didn’t have a spoon. He asked about missions to Jupiter and we read about the Juno mission and how it is lasting longer than they calculated it to last. He said, “It’s great when your calculations is wrong in a good way.”

We then walked over to Stop City! and got more groceries. He picked out the eggplants and sweet potatoes and yellow pepper. And wanted avocados.

We were home around 1. I suggested doing tuna sandwiches instead, as it was getting late for lunch, but he really wanted the salmon and waited. So I started making that, and he copied some complex graphs, retyping them on his Desmos from my iPad. He said, “I’m getting to advanced trigonometry. Nice.” We ate our salmon and whole grains for lunch, then he did alone time. He had a cool tune/progression. He told me, “It’s all minor.” For Minecraft we played in the flat bees world. Which is pretty dull. He had talked Carly into playing in it last night.

When he went to the bathroom he was thinking up a bunch of equations that all equal 27. We got going and headed to school. It was about 2:50, but turned into a parking adventure. A car was stopped in a red zone, driver still in, and blocking a bus. Then had to drive around the big traffic circle again, deal with parking busses and impatient drivers, and finally parked.

We went and got Eve. Heather was at the dentist, so we didn’t check in with her. We saw Corinne and Elise and their mom and talked to them on the stairs, then ran into them again as we walked out of the parking lot. They were talking about having enough pillows for a sleepover, and August weighed in, suggesting they buy more.

August and Eve ran down the sidewalk. I caught up to them, but then August started to walk out into the street without looking well. I missed his hand at first. Never really in danger of being hit, but we were out in the parking area, not on the sidewalk, and there was plenty of line of sight, and not one but two cars didn’t even bother to slow down as they drove by us. Almost certainly cars from the school as well. Ridiculous.

When we got home they got right to playing outside. I made strawberries and chocolate milk for a snack. They played outside until 4:10. They were spraying the hose from the top of the slide and making a rainbow effect. When they came inside they went upstairs and Eve got the baby. Eve said their baby was sick. August: “Eh. She’ll get better in a few days…it’s just a minor cold…” It turned into the doctor game. August was mainly the one that was sick, although he took care of Eve a bit, and she bandaged up her foot at one point. They called me up to help, and August wanted me to draw charts. He liked being sick, getting under the cover and then being taken care of. At one point he said he had ebola, then HIV. When Carly got home I told her she couldn’t go up as he had ebola.

Heather was a bit late, and arrived at 5:40 or so. They had come down, and August was playing a little piano while Eve was drawing something. It was the first time they’d played apart the whole time.

August played some piano for Carly, then ate some crackers and meat. He asked me, “Why does x^2 make a parabola?” I explained, no picture, and he seemed to understand pretty well. He then had a Brother game involving arguing about numbers and doing riddles. He did alone time and then played Minecraft with Carly. He was being rather demanding with her. For his educational videos he watched Kurzgesagt’s videos on “All the Bombs” and “Consciousness”. I then read more of Where the Sidewalk Ends. Dwell was a word of the day.

I got him upstairs and Carly washed him. I heard him say, “Now that’s what you call overkill.” Which is a line from “All the Bombs” I also heard him explain Astronomical Units to her. They read the Comic Science: Solar System book and I took over at 9:10. He had Cheerios and I read What If? On the Stories Podcast we listened to “ The Firefly Queen”. We listened to two meditation tracks, then he was asleep by 10:10.

Toy piano piece on the piano for the first time:

Steering the tractor:

Piano progression:

Playing in the yard with Eve:

Making a rainbow:

Being a sick patient:

He was up at 7:25. We got in the couch bed, then he asked, “Can somebody grow up with just one eye?” This comes out of the whole Braille discussion yesterday. We discussed it, and the concept of glass eyes was new to him. He then spent about 5 minutes circled up, and with his head under a blanket, before jumping up and marching downstairs and getting his iPad.

We played Minecraft, finding an area in our creative world we’d been in before but forgotten about. He had some oatmeal and spent some time practicing scales and reading the bits and bytes poster before we got going.

On the way up to Shani’s she called, saying they had an electrician there and it was hectic and asking if we could come at 9:45. We turned left and headed into town, getting caught in a Even Yehuda traffic jam for a minute. We parked right across from the bakery and went in and got 4 things, then walked over to the park and ate them. He had a sweet one, then ate his savory. I had accidentally gotten two savories. He ate most of my second one, so that worked out well. We discussed the meaning of savory. We played Brother games along the way. As Myna or someone he said, “I was going to have Bar take the retinas out of my eyes so I could practice being blind.”

We then headed to Shani’s. He went on the swing and said he was a planet in orbit and the other ones were his moons. They then did the fishing activity as he was in the swing. Putting the pieces in at the end was a good activity. He said, “I don’t want to use my arms anymore!” as they were kind of tired by the end.

They went to the table and he taught her all about binary code: “That’s binary. That’s basically the basics of binary. I can even do 17.”

He then let her teach him something. They practiced drawing all the numerals correctly, and some letters as well. A couple times he told her, “Nice handwriting!” When he was doing well on 3s she asked if he was ready to move on to 4s but he said he needed more practice on 3s. They also discussed L sounds and he came up with words with medial Ls like igloo. Next they did 4s.

They then moved to the sewing sort of thing. He had a lot of fun with that, and she offered to let him borrow it. He twice refused, saying he wanted to let other kids play with it. This time, when I asked if he wanted to buy it himself he said yes. So we’ll have to swing by a toy store again sometime. He had time at the end to build one structure out of the blocks, then we got going.

We drove over to what we call the Shani Park and parked. We had about ten minutes to play. As we parked the song “The Combine” was on and we discussed revolutionary war after he heard it in the song. And he asked, “Why is it bright when you turn on the lights in a room?” He asked more about the wars, and I mentioned having a video about World War I for him to watch. He initially said no way, as he didn’t want to see people dying. I assured him it wasn’t that sort of video. On a spinning thing he experienced equal and opposite reactions, then we got walking up to his piano lesson, which was just three minutes away.

He had fun at the piano lesson, although I was less excited this time. He ran in (after we spent a minute looking at the planters and rocks outside) ready to show her his new songs. She was really focused on hand position, which I understand but she wasn’t listening to what he was trying to play for her. He was giggling about it though, as she was using the visualization of having a little bird under his hands, and if he flattened his hands it would squish it, or if he lifted them up it would fly away. At one point he said, “I’m in heaven.”

He was playing modes, and she taught him how to press the pedal every measure. They focused on finger placement and where the notes are on the treble and bass clef. At one point when he showed her something her response was, “You didn’t do any of the things I told you about your hands.” She hadn’t given him a single compliment yet… When he did play how she liked she said, “Exactly like this, yes.” It was the closest to a compliment she got. She was also a bit snappy with me. She had to ask me for the English terms for things a few times, and August asked why she kept forgetting words. I told him it wasn’t that she was forgetting, but that she didn’t know the English term. I think she missed me saying “English” in there, as she told me about how she was studying at an advanced level and knew the terms in Hebrew, but not English. I assured her a few times that that was exactly what I had told him.

At the end she asked me to focus on four things with him:

• keep the bird in

• Don’t hit the piano

• Finger position – (I think we should watch a video on this, because then when I looked at what she wanted I wasn’t actually clear myself about the tips of the fingers)

• wrist position

They also decided he’d keep working on the piece he has. They discussed the piece, and the chord accompaniment. He thought the chords looked odd, and said, “That’s blowing my mind, man!”

He still seemed happy enough about it, so not too worried yet. I’m hoping that once he improves his hand position she’ll mellow a bit. Also, if we work on it, then I remind him to play like that when we go in, and tell her he needs a couple minutes to show her what he has worked on right at the beginning, that will help things.

We walked back to the park and played around. We went on the round swing and he had us repeating the Brother needing to pee in the desert story. We did it a few times. I would have loved to stay in the park longer, but he was just focused on doing it again and again, so I got us headed home to get out of it.

We were home at 12:15. In the car he asked about how radiation causes cancer. He was surprised to learn what cancer is. He had thought it was a virus or something. He asked how great grandpa Steve died, and we talked about diseases of aging versus others. He listed all sorts of things he’s learned about: Ebola, AIDS, kidney failure, and several others I didn’t know he had much of an idea about.

He did alone time and I exercised. We played Minecraft, going back to our Survival Island world we haven’t work on for quite a while. In the inventory for a potion he asked, “Why does it say poison and not coison?” I’m pretty sure he was joking and knows that it is actually pronounced ‘poison’ and not how he’s always pronounced it ‘poison’, but it wasn’t entirely clear. I assured him he could always pronounce it ‘poison’ though. I made a strawberry smoothie and brother games and read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends.

He started graphing, and I figured out how to do the teacher activities in Desmos. Setting it up was actually quite frustrating, as a couple things aren’t obvious. We figured the system out though and he did a good part of a lesson that had him changing the slope and height of line equations so that the balls rolling on them would hit the stars. So that worked really well.

I made us quesadillas and we went outside and ate them at the table and did some multiplication blocks. I was figuring out which ones he knows and which he doesn’t. He knows a good amount, but there are several he doesn’t.

He asked how many different ways you could arrange the blocks in the box. We started with two and figured out the pattern. I realized it was the factorial patter, so inside I did a lesson on factorials (in Paper), finding out that with 27 blocks it was an insanely huge number. And he did a little more graphing. We spent some time with the ear training apps, then he went and was doing chords on the piano. He asked, “What’s hypotenuse mean?”

He wanted to do binary, so we did binary for a long time. He wanted bigger numbers, so while I redrew my template he occupied himself by dropping things like markers and his shoes down my sweatshirt. We did a lot of base numbers, converting one big number into things like Base 20 and Base 200 and others.

Carly got home. He did his second alone time, playing piano, rubber bands on drawers, and playing with the cubes. I went for a run. They played Minecraft, and then he was watching the Kurzgesagt fusion video. He ate veggies and rice for dinner. He asked Carly for “more whole grains.” I took a shower. They were reading Comic Science: Solar System. Carly went upstairs. We watched a couple videos I’d been saving for him: Ted-Ed on “Why can’t you divide by zero?” and “Why perpetual motion machines don’t work”.

I got him upstairs for his bath and washed him. He was coming up with different mathematical expressions and wrote one that was “A complex way of saying ‘What’s 9 times 3?’” He had me take a screenshot of that one. Carly actually put him to sleep tonight, in the big bed. August had second thoughts before I said goodnight, wanting to sleep in his own bed. But I brought in his usual blanket and pillows and he was okay with those. I said goodnight to them about 9:30.

Reading the bits poster:

Twirling in the swing:

Playing his piece at piano:

Multiplication cubes:

He got up at 7:35. We got in the couch bed and stayed there until about 8. He got up and asked, “Has the common cold ever killed anybody?” We talked about weakened immune systems and how they can lead to multiple infections and death.

We played Minecraft in our creative world. He spent the end of his time doing new seeds. I made breakfast and put on music. He watched episode 2 of the Ted-Ed “Think Like a Programmer” séries but said it wasn’t educational enough. He watched a Bright Side about the fastest human-made things, then I showed him the Numberphile channel, and we watched part of a video on interesting graphics. That made him want to graph himself, and we figured out how to make a parametric one, then how to do our first regression. Just random numbers this time, but I suggested we later use his own actual growth data.

He had oatmeal for breakfast, then spent some time copying from the sample Desmos equations: looking at them on my iPad and typing them himself on his. “I could spend a whole DAY copying complex math problems.” “Maybe you could record me.” I spotted a mistake he had made “I can’t tell the difference between ‘d’ and ‘b’.”

I made a poster of the months and hung it in the bathroom so he has something to learn when he takes a long time in there. Don’t know why I haven’t thought of that before.

He was retyping a set of equations that used “the function of X” and he realized it matched the equation he’d typed earlier. As I explained why he got it, and told me “I understand it.” He finished a line of it and said, “I’m starting to get this down! The life of a mathematician down.” He finished one last set and we moved to the piano. He was making up a tune using C minor, then I taught him to move from C minor to find the major it is in (D sharp). He talked about determining how long light would take to go around a hypothetical Minecraft world, then paused to discovered a melodic minor scale. We need to learn the different kinds of minor scales now.

He went to the bathroom, and talked about a problem calculating the weight of dirt in Minecraft. He had already declared a block to be a half meter square, so when he was confused when I said a half meter cube of dirt would be one-eighth a full meter I went and got his new multiplication blocks to use as a visual aid. It took a minute, but he got it, especially when I reminded him of the exponential chairs (tiny, regular, and huge) at the science center in New Hampshire. He totally remembered them.

Back on the couch we looked at my months poster and he said he wanted to see snow but didn’t want a car trip. He suggested a plane ride to a country with snow: “I’d appreciate it if it was Greek(Greenland). Mama wouldn’t appreciate it. She hates cold. She could stay. What? She could get work done.”

He did alone time, playing “Ode to Joy” in seven keys. We then played in a random world on Minecraft. He watched the Bright Side video about “All the Bombs”, and that turned into a Bar and Baby Sister game where they blew things up. I made us chocolate milk, then made fish sticks and red rice for lunch. He talked about the 102-1=99 riddle, then he was Bar talking about equations. He went and played his toy piano for a while, also playing with the metronome. He then played the bottom of the piano like a harp, hitting the strings with a chopstick.

We then did “class” time with me being the teacher. We did a little lesson on ‘b’ versus ‘d’. We approached it a few ways, and he said he got it after a few minutes. We’ll pay attention and follow up to make sure. When I took a photo of the sheet we had done i mentioned doing it to document homeschooling, in case we had to explain to the government. He asked why the government would care, and we talked about education laws, and he asked why the government cares if people are educated. We talked about the competitive (against other countries) and financial (more tax revenue) reasons, and then about crime. That led to a whole second discussion of why people steal and their justifications and how they might be caught, which led to how companies use security cameras and guards.

We also reviewed the ‘Bits and Bytes’ and months posters along the way, and then talked about graphing on paper. He snuck back to the iPads to copy a couple more graphs.

He found the Braille options in Desmos and was very intrigued by what it was. So we looked up Braille and looked at how it worked. On paper I wrote some Braille for him, and also did some graphing on paper with him. I made him some crackers and peanut butter. We got into a funny discussion of parenting versus kidding tricks, and how to convince him to get going to the school to hang out in the library. He said the best way to get him to go wasn’t to convince him, but to tell him we weren’t going, then he’d want to go. So we went back and forth using reverse psychology on each other.

We got going a bit after 3. At the library August did a piece of art while I looked, rather unsuccessfully, for books about friends moving away. When August needed to use the bathroom we went out and came back in. Library Eve and one of her friends were sitting at a computer, and I heard the friend, talking about August, say something like, “He’s so cute it’s scary.” We then sat on the beanbags and read books. We read the entire Zeus book before returning it. Entitled and birthright were words we talked about and were words of the day. August told me, “I want to see a harp someday.” And one of his new things in recognizing trade offs: “Here’s a trade off…” This time it came when he was questioning why there were doors, that are locked, in the back of the library, and I suggested they could build an office back here. We then read the Mouse Tales book, then Mr. Tickle from the shelves. Pandemonium was a new word from that.

We chose Apollo, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Chester’s Way, by Kevin Henke, to check out. As we checked out he talked to Liz about math. She knew about Desmos because Lillian is in Anna’s class, and did the roller skate picture we had seen. August told us, “I want to play Minecraft with algebra and trigonometry.”

We headed home. In the car he asked me, “How are blind people’s bodies different?” We talked about that, then as we got out of the car he asked, “Why’s your tongue so comfortable being in your spit all the time?” And why doesn’t it just dissolve. “And why is it so important?” “How does it help you talk?”

At home he said hi to Carly then started showing her graphs. I read some of Where the Sidewalk Ends. He ate chicken and noodles for dinner, but skipped the sweet potato. I went for a run. When I got back she gave him a bath first, then I took a shower. They read some of the Comic Science: Solar System book.

August and I then read Hilo 6: All the Pieces Fit. We’ve waited a year for it, and it was worth it. We read the whole thing. I thought it was going to be the last book in the series, so we were excited to see that a book 7 will be coming next year. Carly had planned to put him to sleep, but reading Hilo took too long, so we decided to do the usual routine. August went in and played with the mandolin for a minute, and said, “I can play music with that baby.”

He was then talking about the speed of light and how that affects time. I told him we cold learn more about it another day. We listened to “Hey Little Mouse!” on Stories Podcast, then listened to a couple meditation tracks. We listened to Max Richter’s “Cypher” on repeat, and he was asleep by 10:10.

Copying complex equations:

Explaining his copying:

Finishing up the equations:

Song of the day on toy piano:

Are there any yottawatts?:

His harp: