Author: Ryan/Dada

He was up just before 7:30. Yelled “Dada!” But when I ran up he was fine.

Downstairs I covered him with his blanket and he took about ten minutes. I read most of Days with Frog and Toad, then we played Minecraft. We talked about our day and set up the calendar, then he played piano and I first scrubbed the coffee spill area thoroughly with water and soap. He started looking up chords, then switched to Life Noggin videos as I put more Velcro backing on my calendar envelopes. He watched several, but they were on a wide variety of subjects. He liked the on on parenting, and had to ask what spanking is. An odd word of the day.

I made fried eggs, toast, and strawberries for breakfast and August also had a strawberry yogurt. We watched a final Life Noggin video on self-driving cars. At the end August said he wanted to wait several years before riding in one. I was kind of surprised by his reluctance.

We did math in Khan Academy and worked through some 2nd and 6th grade math. We watched a video in it and learned about factor, term, and coefficient. When I explained coefficient he got excited and started explaining how the coefficient changes the slope of the lines he draws in the graphing calculator, for example 2x versus 3x. He then he wanted some equations to type into the graphing calculator. He went into an Algebra II course on his own and said, “Algebra, finally!” We then looked at some problems and discussed x-intercepts. He was then typing in equations to solve the problems

Factor term coefficient wotd. He explained how the coefficient changes the slope of a line. We played some Brother and Sister games along the way.

Lauren then messaged and August had iPad time with Gilad in the Greek world. I made him a quesadilla for lunch. They were done playing at 12:30. We did a Brother game where Ms. Safe was meeting all of Brother’s tigers, but they kept attacking her. He was putting tape on me. He took a green piece of paper and started folding and taping it, and eventually turned it into a paper airplane. I put a paper clip on it and it actually flew a bit. He then asked me to make a real paper airplane and I folded a dart. I got him outside for a while. It was windy, and that was blowing it around. It stuck against the fence for several seconds and August said, “The wind has enough muscles?” He managed to get it over the fence once and I went and retrieved it. He went inside and I enjoyed the sun for a few more minutes.

Back inside he did piano and synth for alone time. He made a sound he called “Kit Kat Karate.” We played Minecraft, playing in a world he’s done with Carly. We had chocolate milk, and he quoted from a shoe commercial he’s seen: “Hey there shoe wearer, let’s talk shoes. First, the thing between you and the ground…” from an ad.

We discussed his reading options:

• Read Sid the Science Kid with paper

• Read Rivet level 3 (2 books)

• Writing words in the new notebook

• Video and brainstorming words for a phonics sound, followed by a Rivet level 3

He instantly chose the new notebook, and as we talked about which letters to write he said you could make an actual X with two equations: y=x and y=-x. That was kind of crazy. He had actually chose to just have a glass of milk and then, once it was all gone, had a small bowl of chocolate powder. An experiment that he liked but won’t be happening again because it was so messy and slow.

We then wrote in his notebook. He asked me about the difference between ‘O’ and ‘0’. I used the word distinction and he asked what that meant and it was a word of the day. He wrote ‘Zinn’ and other letters, and I taught him how to write a ‘9’ properly and he practiced that several times. He circled the one he liked the best.

He was using a mechanical pencil so when we were done he looked at a piece of it under the microscope and it was really cool. Out of no where he explained to me his theory of the universe and that it will expand and contract and expand and contract several times. He got this idea from some of the videos he has watched. However he then had his own twist on the idea, explaining that it would only happen a certain number of times. He compared it to the coin vortex at the science center, and how, when the coin is on an elliptical orbit it will shoot past the center, be pulled back, shoot past again, be pulled back, etc. but each time it doesn’t go as far as the previous time, until eventually the coin is sucked down the middle. He explained how the universe was graphed around a point, and will expand and contract, losing momentum each time until it runs out of momentum and can’t expand again. “Humanity will restart three million times. Well, unless we find another universe. That’s my theory…the big expansion.”

Carly got home and we showed her his writing and discussed his math. He showed her, and she talked about wanting to do Khan Academy herself. So the two of them did a ton of math, separately and together, and I went for a run. When I got back they were still doing math, with him graphing equations from a problem she was working on.

I got him dinner (cauliflower, rice dish, and hummus) and went up and took a shower. When I came down they had started the documentary and popcorn we hadn’t gotten to earlier. It was a documentary about the brain and virtuosos. He watched quite a bit of it, then said that it made him want to play music. He set up the keyboard and played and played. He came up with a sound he called something like “Quadratic Venus” then played a bunch of really cool pieces. On involved a four-sixteenth notes, quarter note pattern that I took a video of. He kept playing, and asked “Did I just do my alone time for tomorrow?” He wasn’t bothered when I said no, and kept playing. “Cool soundtrack, right?” When I agreed he shot back, “Why?”

He told me, “I want an app to be able to mix sounds and record them.” Not quite sure what he wants that we can’t do. He was then asking me to explain things: “What’s self-esteem” “What’s satisfaction?” We played with the alien, then he took photos on Carly’s phone. I read the rest of Days with Frog and Toad.

He had some toast with peanut butter, then we did a Brother game with Calculator supporting Brother and his cat reserves, supposedly doing research to show that the cats don’t eat a lot of birds. Then more piano playing and some Cheerios. He was then doing math, and asking crazy questions like, “What’s a googolplex factorial?” Carly took him up for a bath.

She did some reading with him, then I took over. When I said, “Let’s calm down our brains,” he said, “I’m too busy thinking about algebra.” We listened to Circle Round’s “The great Ball Game“ quarrel and superior were even more words of the day. At the end they asked you to reflect on what you thought was unique about yourself and you were proud of. I asked him and he said, “Two things: I’m smarter than Eve and I can move my eyes like this.” Not exactly the answer rI was expecting. I mentioned playing the piano and he agreed. “And I can roll my tongue.” “AND I can see stuff in my mind.”

He asked, “How does the human body do that?” Move eyes around, that is. Told him that was one to look up tomorrow. He said, “I want to know tons of things…Mostly I want to learn about algebra. Well, and other kinds of math…and how to measure the length around a triangle…how to make complex graphs…how to use the right coordinates…I could do art with graphing…” “I’m going to go experiment with cosine tomorrow…just remind me how to spell that dang thing.”

He was then humming, making a tune, and said he was changing the sound of his arpeggio. I offered to record the tune he was singing, hoping that would let him go to sleep. We recorded that, listened to more cello concerto, and he was asleep by 10:40.

At one point, while August was playing away on the toy piano, Carly asked me if I thought we should get a piano. I looked on Facebook, and saw that a nice-looking upright piano had been posted just 30 minutes previously, for 300 shekels it is down in Tel Aviv. We would have to pay for moving it here and at least a tuning, but it would be really nice if it works out.

Explaining how the coefficient changes his graphs:

Explaining his graphs on paper:

Copying equations from Khan Academy:

Minecraft with Gilad:

Flying his paper airplane:

Trying my paper airplane:

Making crazy shapes on a graphing calculator:

Writing numbers:

Finding the line intercepts:

Fast finger work on the synth:

He woke up at 6:50 as he was really stuffy. When I went up he went back into his bedroom and got in bed. I lay down on the lower one. He stayed in bed for quite a while but didn’t fall back to sleep. We went downstairs at 7:25 and he spent another 15 minutes resting on the couch, covered with the blanket. I then read Lobel’s Mouse Tales. He did a lot of laughing.

I had the bed part pulled out, and as I was reading I had heard the garbage truck honking in the street, and when done I heard it backing up. I got up to take a look outside. August gut up as well, and then ran back to the couch. I didn’t see it, but he somehow managed to hit my coffee mug, which was full and in the center of the coffee table a ways away from the couch, and send it flying off the edge, soaking the front of the couch and the rug. I spent about 20 minutes soaking it up and then washing it.

We played Minecraft, then I made French toast for breakfast, that we had with strawberries and yogurt.

It was then time to get going and we got ready and drove to the Ra’anana Mall, which is just a block or two north of where we bought our car but I didn’t realize was there. There are a lot of malls around here. On the way we listened to music, then he had a Brother game where he met a girl building an actual base in the park, like in Minecraft.

We found street parking behind the mall and took it, then walked around the end to the front. There was loud machinery/fan noises coming from the building and he asked, “Are they building a tornado in there?” “A helicopter?” He then said, “That’s a C note.” I got out the piano on my phone and tried to test it. He was in the ballpark, at least. When I then tested him on notes from just the keyboard, asking what note they were, he was really close on one (within a half step), then within a step of the next, but then seemed to hit the mark. So, I don’t think he has perfect pitch, at least not yet.

In the mall we found the play area downstairs and sat at a table outside and waited for them. We were talking about large number math, and he asked, “Could you tell me the record for the most digits of pi memorized by a human?” We looked that up, and they showed up at 10:15.

We went into the play area and played until 12. They started in the first room, spinning things on the wall, then went in the ball room. Lauren and I were able to talk then, but then the kids wanted us to go up in the structure with them, and we played with them most of the time after that.

We worked our way through it, stopping for the basketball part, then spending most of our time in the soccer area again. All four of us were playing, kicking balls, and switching back and forth from one side to the other. August, again, was generally a referee or goalie, but then after a while started playing, trying to kick the ball past Gilad. He was really excited when he got a goal, then his second and third. Gilad was actually keeping score, and August was okay with it. He was winning, so that helped, but it was a big step.

Eventually we headed back down and they played on the first level again. August was a squirrel and had a whole squirrel fort going, that Lauren and I helped him build. And they spent more time in the ball area. Around 12 Lauren and Gilad had to get going so we all headed out. We said goodbye, then August and I walked around the mall, looking for someplace for lunch. I was thinking a food court, but we didn’t find it at first. We were about to head out to the street to try to find a pizza place but then we stumbled on the food court and found a pizza place with no line. August got a slice of cheese and I got an eye-shaped thing that had an egg on top, August ate his slice and a chunk of mine.

We exited at the north side of the mall this time and walked back to the car. As we got driving August asked about the Civil War and we talked more about it, including about slavery, which was a new concept to him, I think. We also talked about the lack of medicine, etc. and so he also asked me to tell him about the president who was shot, but he was disappointed that I didn’t know that many details.

We drove to the Red Pirate Toy Store over by the train station. Carly had wanted some bubbles to take to the gan with her class tomorrow, and August liked the idea of having bubbles to play with Eve. I also thought of getting him one or two other things, like the games/sewing thing that Shani has been using with him.

We walked around the store. He tried out a punching bag and liked it. We found the bubbles, but Carly hadn’t responded to my email asking how many yet. We looked around and were looking at the toy section. He found some puzzle games but they were a bit pricey…maybe an Amazon purchase. He wasn’t super excited about Rush Hour when I found it, so didn’t get that. He was taking photos and Carly called, so he answered. We showed her the bubbles and bought a few for her, and two for us. In the art area August got a packet of beads and I found the notebooks for writing in. I didn’t know how he would respond to that, but he was actually excited and said we should get two: one for homeschool practice and one for him to write in on his own. We also got a few with graph paper in them, as they were one shekel each.

We headed home, stopping at the strawberry stand. They are now down to 3 for 50 shekels. We were at home at 2:05. I let him do a short alone time to fit it in. And I realized he hadn’t gone to the bathroom in at LEAST 6 hours. Later, we couldn’t remember if he had gone to the bathroom before leaving to get Eve. If not, he didn’t go until after she left.

We played Minecraft, then ran to the car and headed to school. We quickly walked and dropped off the bubble supplies in Carly’s classroom and picked up the stuff left over from them making play dough to take to the gan. We went and got Eve and checked in with Heather, then Eve led us to the preschool playground.

August didn’t want to go, but agreed to a half hour. He played on the swing a bit while she was making stuff in the kitchen area. He kept asking how much time was left but was a good sport about it. But then he started playing with her in the ship area and then the car. They were a couple who had two kids and Eve kept calling him “Honey.” August said they were driving to a red dwarf She said their daughter at school had hit someone and they needed to go pick her up. August asked what had happened, and after Eve made up something (about a friend not sharing or something) August said, “Why would they follow the rules? Of course they won’t follow the rules; they’re children.”

August also asked me to remind him, “What is asymptote?” And tried to explain it to Eve. Eventually we headed to the house. They played outside a bit, and I got them a snack of strawberries, crackers and peanut butter, and chocolate milk. They played more outside, but August wanted to burn more paper. So I burned a couple of pieces for them. August came into the kitchen and asked me, “Burning fire is addictive…why?”

Back inside they played with the Legos and straw blocks. Heather showed up about 5:15 and told us about their move to Albania. It is good for her, the girls will get to go to an IB school, and Dave will have a work visa. August told her, for her facts, what an asymptote is and that the color of fire depends on its temperature.

After they left he and I built a lego arch for Carly to try to drop things on to break it. He then played lots of piano. I looked up the chords for “Just a Little Love” as he talked about learning the chords of a song. Eventually, we were on the couch and played with the squishy light up alien thing we had bought at the toy store. The alien was trying to eat August, or parts of him, with its feelers.

I went for a run. When I got back he was finishing his time on Minecraft, then watched Life Noggin videos. He had cauliflower, hummus, and pita for dinner. Carly read articles about living robots to him and watched the videohttps://youtu.be/aQRBCCjaYGE

Carly gave him a bath and I did dishes. She was then reading to him about the human body, and I heard her explain the cerebrum to him. A word of the day.

We switched and I let him do a few of the moves in the game that goes with his watch. He hasn’t been wearing it recently, but wore it all day today and had tons of steps. We read some What If? about human versus computer power. MIPS was another word of the day. He talked a lot about the chapter, then we tried two meditations in an app that Carly had told us about. He went to the bathroom and said good night to Carly. He’s stuffy but wouldn’t blow his nose. Lights off at 9:30. We listened to more of the Bach Cello Suites – Recomposed and he was asleep by 9:45.

Noise from the mall:

Ball pit:

A little soccer:

Playing soccer 1:

Playing soccer 2:

Drumming:

Punching bag:

Preschool playground music:

Playground percussion:

Playground percussion 2:

Driving the car together:

Zinnie cam: the drive home with Eve:

Legos together and humming:

He got up just before 8. I went up and he was in clam position on the couch bed. We got under the covers for a few minutes. As soon as we got downstairs the power went out for a minute. It was back on soon though and we played Minecraft, then got ready and ate and headed to Shani’s.

He had taken his two rocks with quartz in them. They have become his most treasured rocks. I think they are the ones he got when we went to the JFK memorial. He showed them to Shani, and we discussed her trip to Warsaw. They had fun, but it was cold and her kids aren’t used to that. They had ended up going to two huge trampoline places. She used the phrase “went away” a couple times to talk about her trip, and August said, “Went away also means dying…So did you die and were brought back to life?” I’m not sure where he learned that euphemism. He was playing on the rope swing and was saying a lot of “Anyway” when he didn’t want to help untangle the ropes, and he didn’t want me to tell her “about that horrible party” on the weekend when I was telling her about jumping places we’ve been.

He wanted to show her the graphing calculator, but eventually they moved on to the plan and moved to writing. Nice to see how he gets into it now. He did shapes with stencils and doodled on the page and was doing math on his own. Forgot that sheet of paper there at the end. She tried to teach him a trick with his fingers for multiplying by 9. He was really resistant, for some reason. As they worked on math he multiplied 14 by 10 in his head, then easily added 140 and 14 in his head. She introduced him to a little notebook with squares for writing in and he wrote numbers in there. He decided to practice 7 and 1 (well, 11) today. When she complimented him for staying in the box he said, “I have a good technique.”

She then pulled out the magic board, which is a board where you sort of sew a yard into a plastic grid, then there is a really satisfying sound when you pull the yard out. When they started he said, “I hate sewing…Just kidding, I love sewing.” She wanted him to use all of the yard before pulling it out and he said, “Well I’ll do my best. I don’t guarantee I’ll use all of it.” She was getting him to hold the needle thing properly and explained it was for getting stronger with his fingers. We returned Rush Hour. She has another game for us to try next week and borrow, as they ran out of time for it this week. Before we left though he showed her the graphing calculator app, and we discussed his math level with her.

On our way to the car he tried to remember how he learned about the graphic calculator. He asked if it was that guy named Mike. I didn’t know who he was talking about, but then he described Peter and Micah visiting Chelan this summer and Micah having his graphing calculator and telling us about Desmos. So Micah gets credit for sparking this interest. August, talking about how he’s figured out how to add in the letters to his equations, said, “I knew when I grew up I’d know how to use all that complex stuff.”

At home we walked around the yard a bit. We discovered that his baby scum in the bottle of water has sort of fallen apart and started to dissolve. Inside, he had a piece of French toast. We then made a deal for Minecraft time, letting him do some of the alone time after. We played Minecraft, then watched a couple Life Noggin videos, including one on how to catch a snake in your house, which he really liked. He then had a Brother game where he needed to go to the bathroom on a subway (there’s a Life Noggin, which he didn’t watch yet, about why subways don’t have bathrooms that was the inspiration).

I went to do dishes and realized there was no water. August got worried and hid under the blanket. I went to check outside and realized they were doing some work up the street. I talked to David both about the work (he said it was because of all the rain we’ve had) and the leak to our water pipe, which led to a discussion of Shmuel and him still being gone. David said a few things about how it is nice that Shmuel is gone, and not having to talk to him (and maybe he meant the construction noise) and that if we get lucky maybe Shmuel will decide to stay in Florida for a year or two. Not sure how much he was joking or really being critical of Shmuel.

Back inside August played piano. He played “London Bridge” and his “Spooky Song” and “Just a Little Love” in different keys. For alone time he was playing chords and making new synth sounds. He then wanted to do math, but first did a show and tell at school game (Brother’s class) where he showed off the keyboard and then graphing calculator. In math we basically made sure we finished off the 1st grade skills, then went searching for where coordinate systems are introduced. We checked in on some bar graph/dot graph things along the way, but they seemed pretty easy, until we finally found introduction to coordinate systems at 5th grade. We did the 5th grade section on that and he found it super easy. So, next time it will be on to 6th grade.

We stopped for now though and I made us grilled cheese with turkey and avocado for a late lunch. He had a Sister game with her getting hurt in Bar’s lab. He now did his second set of alone time, playing piano, after first showing me cool chords first. I went to the bathroom, then went back to the couch. August had known I was in the bathroom, but was then focused on playing. A few minutes later he was surprised, and said “You like teleported.”

We played Minecraft, then he played more piano. When he wanted to do another Brother and Sister game, and play Monster Physics, I told him we had to do one of my activities first: MEL Chemistry or reading. He first suggested math instead, but we ended up doing some music, discussing (a little) how chords are built. Discordant was a word of the day. He then talked me into his educational video, specifically requesting “What Happens if You Go to Bed Angry?” on Life Noggin.

He drew on the chalkboard a bit, then asked, “What does ‘easier said than done’ mean?” We then got to science time, opening the latest set from MEL Chemistry. The two experiments are about glowing things. One requires us to buy something, so we went to the other one, which involves heating two powders with a fire to make them glow. We needed a dark spot so we used the bathroom and called it a “bathroom of science.” The experiment went well, and August then wanted to just burn some paper. So we did a little inside, burning it in the glass jar. We then moved outside and burned a couple more pieces in the old metal bucket. In talking about the burning he said, “It’s like a trade off: you’re burning fuel but gaining light.”

Before Carly got home I had agreed to do 15 minutes of Monster Physics with him. That went well, and Carly got home. But when he was done he then demanded educational videos. It was a meltdown from there, as I told him he didn’t get extra video time after extra iPad time.

I did some dishes, Carly got him calmed down and we got him some dinner (rice dish, hummus, pita, and she made cauliflower) and I went upstairs and worked for close to a couple hours. I think they did some more math, then Carly gave him a bath, then was reading the Comic Science: Plagues book to him when I took over.

We read some of What If? then listened to the latest Circle Round, “The Very Busy Fairies”, which was quite funny, then did one meditation in the series before listening to the Bach Cello Concertos. He was asleep a bit earlier, around 10:20.

Sewing thing with Shani:

Chords song on toy piano:

Piano alone time:

Zinnie cam: burning paper trade off:

Zinnie cam: preparing the chemistry experiment:

Burning paper:

The burning experiment in the dark:

Burning for science:

Good amount of thunder in the early morning. It didn’t wake August up, but when I checked on him when I got up his head was near the foot of the bed.

I woke him up at 8. He took several minutes to wake up. Downstairs I read all of Zeus: King of the Gods, a short graphic novel that was a really good intro to the titans and olympians and Zeus. August then wanted to be Zeus in Minecraft. We found the skin, but he actually decided to be a sea monster instead.

Afterwards we watched a Ted-Ed video about third eyelids. Vestigial was a word of the day. Then a National Geographic video about how animals see the world, followed by a Bright Side video on why the Earth’s core is hotter than the sun. “He has two jokes already!” One more “Why smartphones are always rectangular”.

He wanted me to act like a teacher and we went and discussed our day.

He did some graphing calculator. He can set up a spiral equation on his own and saved a couple of equations he discovered. He moved to the chalkboard and wrote a couple equations and showed what they would look like for the “class.”

He moved to his piano and we worked on his composition. I realized I had been making the transposition overly difficult by leaving out a rest. It was hard to get him to focus on math, as he kept playing the piano. He then accidentally tipped it over with his knee again. Finally, got him focused on the end of first grade math. For math equations we talked about how any symbol can be a variable, and he decided to call it “Mr. Stickypants” At one point, August randomly said an answer had a point in it, then announced, “This just in, a magic decimal is taking over human calculators.” We almost finished first grade math—there’s just one addition activity that needs a little work.

He was going to play keyboard for alone time but then switched to the anatomy app and got away with it. Told him he couldn’t spend the next alone time looking at a screen. I exercised. We then played the Minecraft Greek mythology.

He ate a grape yogurt, and we played a Brother meeting Millie game. It was May again as Sample’s month-fixing machine had broken. I made more of the frozen pizza things for his lunch and we did more Mille games. He then played more piano. It was getting frustrating trying to get him ready to leave the house. The assembly for the end of the author visit was 2:25. August was still in pajamas.

We had heard a couple minutes of hard rain, then it stopped. By the time I forced him to stop playing piano though it had started raining again, but not hard. August had just mentioned something about wanting to go somewhere where it hails a lot and when we went outside we discovered that the hard rain hadn’t been rain, but actually hail. He was brave and went out in the yard to pick up some hail. He got more as we went to the car and we talked a little about the science of hail and how it was more likely to hail here than in Korea.

He had been brave going out in the rain then, but when we got to school he didn’t want me to park anywhere but up in the bus lanes, which I couldn’t do this early. I did go into the parking lot and find a space. I told him I wouldn’t force him out of the car, but we could sit there a few minutes and go in when he agreed to it. Luckily, the rain lessened and after a couple minutes he said we could go in.

We walked into the auditorium right as Ilana was introducing the visiting author. We chose seats, and then there was a fifth grade play about King Solomon and the hoopoe birds and how they got their head feathers. August really liked that, and it was a lot easier to understand than the Peter Pan play. Still don’t know why Peter Pan was so difficult.

We stayed while the author discussed his visit and showed the photos he had taken of birds, both on the field trip to Tel Aviv and around the campus. August liked that, and pointed out some birds he recognized, and places around campus. We left when they were handing out gifts and thank yous, and headed to the library.

He did art on the computer, then we found a big bean bag we hadn’t seen before on the checkered carpet. We read a couple Elephant and Piggie books (There is a Bird on Your Head! and Elephants Cannot Dance!) and a picture book about a mathematician called Nothing Stopped Sophie: The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain (scoff and equality were words of the day). He then did some graphing calculator on my phone, since he’d been reminded of math, before we read the classic Miss Nelson Is Missing. He also randomly asked, “How do you spell cosine?”

Carly found us and then went to do a few more minutes of work. We wandered around the library and I saw the books in French and found Where the Wild Things Are and a Roald Dahl book. Carly came back and we got going. She discussed play dough recipes with Liz and found out that Liz has a huge container of cream of tarter so she’s going to give us some. I checked out those books and Mouse Tales and Days with Frog and Toad, and another I Can Read! book called Sid the Science Kid: Earth Day Fun.

As we walked out to the car he was joking with Carly and said, “I used mathematics and pun-itation.” We were home around 4:40. He showed Carly graphs. He ate some rice dish and we did a Brother game where he meets a girl who is a mathematician named Calculator. He did alone time, building a new fort behind the chair and then just cuddling under a blanket on the couch.

Carly had looked through old books and got several to donate to the gan she’s taking her students to on Friday. They included the pop-up Wheels on the Bus, Alphabet Book, Little Miss Muffet, One Two Buckle My Shoe, Jack and Jill, But Not the Hippopotamus, Tickle, and maybe a couple others (Sophie the Giraffe?). We decided to keep the One Two… and Jack and Jill. She then went to the store to get ingredients and I didn’t realize she was also going to school so took the books there before I took a photo.

August had a fuller dinner now, having the sweet potato dish and the leftover pizza things from lunch. We watched Bright Side’s “All You Have to Do to Stay Safe in a Hurricane” and “Do This and You’ll Have a Photographic Memory”. We then played with Legos, doing physics challenges. That is, built a bridge and he would drop things on it. At one point, when it was strong, he said, tricked me. That’s impressive.”

After Carly was back I went upstairs to work. When I came down he was reading the Sid the Science Kid book to her, using the paper cutout trick. He was doing pretty well when I saw it, but she later said he was reading quite fast after that. He said he it was hard, but he could do it.

She gave him a bath, then I went in at 9:15. We got his Cheerios. He talked about someone’s water bottle at preschool overflowing because of pressure and we discussed how that would happen. We read the What If? chapter about floating up at a constant rate. He asked why ears pop and we read https://www.childrensmuseum.org/blog/why-do-my-ears-pop-when-im-in-an-airplane. He requested more Cheerios.

We listened to Circle Round’s “The Woman in the Moon”, then an Insight Timer meditation. August told me something about being able to pick the earth up, then something bout building something. A robot I think. We listened to the Dissonance album and he was finally asleep by 10:45.

Making a spiral equation:

Drawing graphs in chalk:

Feeling the hail:

Reading with the paper:

I woke him up at 8:10. Took him a few minutes of stretching to get going. Downstairs we watched most of the Formula E race. We discussed a good amount of strategy and the technical stuff. He surprised himself by reading ‘Massa’ and a few other names. He asked where Hamilton was, remembering him from Formula 1.

Eventually we moved on to Minecraft. At one point he asked, “Would you be kind enough to get me some raw cod?” He asked for some banana bread but he didn’t really eat it. After Minecraft I hung up envelopes for our calendar and he played with the graphing calculator. We did a good amount of discussing math. Eventually we moved to Khan Academy. We had one activity and he finished kindergarten math. He was then doing the latter part of first grade. He got bar graphs down easy peasy, as the problems themselves were the sort of story problems he’s done with Carly a lot. Telling time (just half hours) was easy too, and that’s where we stopped.

On his piano he discovered a flamenco scale, then had some oatmeal. He spent some alone time taping up a structure in the kitchen. We played Minecraft, and grief was a word of the day. August found a new way to have fun and be funny, turning me and then the monsters and villagers invisible with potions.

Back on the piano he played the c minor scale, then e minor scale. He asked, “What’s ambitious?” A word of the day. I explained, then he said, “I am ambitious.” We finally got ready to go, but he was concerned about the rain. I convinced him to head to town. We left at 1:15. August played more with the graphing calculator, and when we ordered pizza at VIPizza he showed the calculator to the owner. We talked a lot about the graphing and infinity as we ate, and lines going, seemingly, to infinity. I looked up and taught him the word asymptote. He said, “It’s like a whirlpool that gets closer and closer but it’s infinite.”

We finished our pizza (he had two slices) and then we went next door and did some grocery shopping. Back at the meat counter he saw a huge chunk of meat with ribs coming out of it. The guy spoke English and asked if we had any questions. I told him August did and we asked what it was. Unfortunately, his answer was very professional, talking about the origin of the beef and its quality. But I learned the term tomahawk steak, which is another term for rib eye. The guy had been born in San Francisco and recently traveled the whole east coast.

August had fun moving his eyes around as we finished shopping. On the way home he developed a ice cream story with the pirate captain, exchanging his gold for melting ice cream.

At home I made little signs to teach August how to make major, minor, and diminished chords—something August had actually asked about a day or two ago. He did a lot more graphing calculator, then we learned about chords together and he was starting to get it. He’s still kind of stuck on the white and black keys, but starting to understand how you use the chromatic scale to determine these things. We also figured out that a chord progression that he developed a couple weeks ago and has been playing is A diminished, D diminished, E diminished, F major.

We moved over to the rug and I was the teacher and he was a student in class, teaching the chord structures. He was getting it down, but doing even better telling me what kind of chord I was playing by ear.

Carly got home. He showed her that and the graphing calculator. For alone time he did some tracing, tracing parts of a Minecraft picture onto paper. We then played Minecraft. He stopped okay at first, and read to me from Rivet, but then wanted an educational video and wouldn’t wait until after we ate dinner. Bit of a meltdown.

We had dinner (sweet potato dish, and Carly made a rice dish with artichoke). He was spinning a coin on the table and we discussed coin flipping. I told Carly I shouldn’t teach him all my tricks or I won’t have anything to teach him by the time he’s 6.

He requested a video again, and again got upset.Carly took over and they were going to paint. I went up to work. During that time he apparently asked what sine meant, and she taught him about right triangles and circles.

She took him up for his bath. He was then having a fake argument with her, and asked me to take a video. We said good night and read a few questions in What If? Sterilize was another new word. We ended up reading more about moles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant?wprov=sfti1

We started a series of children’s meditations on Insight Timer. As we were going to sleep he told me something about compressing air into a solid. It rained really hard for a minute. He asked, “What would happen if the earth weighed three times as much as the sun?” We listened to the Bach Sinfonias again, and he was asleep around 10:30.

Demonstrating one of his cool graphs:

A funny looking graph:

A song of the day in c minor:

Wait, what?:

My argument was chaka chika:

Around 4:30 there were a few peels of the craziest, loudest thunder we’ve heard here, along with a heavy downpour. I got up and watched it out the window. I have no idea how it didn’t wake August up. Later he was laughing in his sleep. He was then up at 8. He did some graphing calculator with Carly, then played Polytopia and the Bricks app since Minecraft is still down.

Carly got him egg and toast for breakfast and they left, headed to the bowling alley at the Poleg mall, at 9:40. He had take the keyboard to play in the car. At the party he went in a bouncy thing that was really fun, then they played bowling. He had fun with bowling, but the excitement wore off. He told her, “This is boring and repetitive.” He wanted to do the bouncy thing again, but it turned it was closed and/or would have cost a fair amount more of money. He started to get upset about it and they left. He kept it together pretty well, but was upset the whole way home. They got here at 12:30 and he had a meltdown. Carly asked if we should cancel Gabi at 1. I thought the whole meltdown had been happening since the party (he got really upset when Carly tried to tell me what happened, so I didn’t hear details until the evening) so agreed right away to let him know that we were cancelling. It turned out he had really only started to meltdown right then. In hindsight I think we could have turned it around in time. Oh well.

Carly let me go back upstairs to work some more and they worked it out. When I came down they were doing some math, trying to figure out how often airplanes had to leave a runway if there were a thousand flights a day. We did some Apples to Apples, then he played piano. I looked up the videos and photos of when we first found it, then went back and bought it and took it home and we watched those. August saw little him playing it and tried to play the same notes. That was really cool.

We cleaned up, then Carly left for a run at 3:10. August made a new sound he called “Bolts and Screws”. He took photos after using my phone to see the sound waves up close. Carly got home, then went to do recycling. He watched a Kurzgesagt video on “Prison Earth” (one of his favorites) and I started making dinner (a sweet potato and chickpea and kale dish with ginger and coconut). He told me all about machines he made to capture space junk (in the form of a Bar and Sister game) but wouldn’t let me film him.

He then watched a few Life Noggin videos. Carly Skyped with her parents. He watched the Life Noggin video about going to bed hungry with Cherie. Pangs was a word of the day from that.

August made a structure in the kitchen for alone time. It was for communicating with his website. When I told him about the dinner he exclaimed, jokingly, “Chickpeas? There’s chickpeas in there‽ There’s NO WAY I’m drinking the pee of a chick.” He spent a long time on his structure. Carly was commenting on student papers. Minecraft was working again, so we played in the Greek mythology world.

We worked on a musical composition, using a tune he had just made up. It was a tricky rhythm I was trying to get down. He ate a plate of the sweet potato dish. Not as addictive as he hoped, he said. He wanted to play fake Apples to Apples but I told him it’s not fun when he always wins, and won’t even allow the occasional tie. He did a little with Carly.

I then started to read Lumberjanes #2. Carly wanted me to submit our insurance claims though so I switched with Carly and went up to do that. He was upset when I went up, but eventually let her read something to him.

She gave him a bath. He then had a rather dangerous pose on the stairs that he insisted on showing me. He was still hungry so had strawberries and Cheerios before we brushed his teeth. He talked about moving objects and said, “Things don’t want to move or change their speed. But we have to convince them to.” He described it as “Paying the debt.” “I’m paying the gravity debt,” he said, as he pushed something on the floor. I think this was from the Kurzgesagt video.

I talked about something “Sans leaves.” He asked what that meant, so sans was another word of the day. We discussed the attic and rain and possible leaking, but agreed it wasn’t a big concern.

In bed we read several pages of an adult book called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. We listened to Circle Round’s “The Golden Flask”, then tried a meditation on Headspace. We listened to the Bach Sinfonias and he was asleep at 10:20.

Chromatic scale:

Zinnie cam: at bowling:

Zinnie cam: lights on the floor:

Stop videotaping me!:

Kitchen creation:

Another new song:

He woke me up at 2:45: “Dada!” I went in and he was sitting up, talking very clearly, and said a couple things about blankets: “It’s got its own shape.” In the morning when I asked him about it he wasn’t quite sure why he said it, but he talked about blankets having a different shape tucked in around his body. Which made me think I was right, in that he had been trying to pull the covers back over himself but was getting the ‘wrong’ blanket.

He then got up at 7:25, as I was getting up. He climbed right in bed with me and cuddled up. Stayed about ten minutes before getting up and going downstairs. He and Carly used a calculator, I think on her phone, and discussed math for quite a while, then she was preparing a needle for him to sew with when I came down. He said, “I want to be a sew-er when I grow up.” He did that a while, and I got him banana bread. When he finally went to log on to Minecraft though it wouldn’t work, even after restarting, etc. I looked into it and it turns out it is a global problem. He got quite upset and was rolling around on the couch. Carly said he could watch videos instead, and he somehow found the Minecraft stickman videos, which I thought I had set so they wouldn’t show up in YouTube. Aagh. One was pretty hilarious though, where the command blocks go crazy and they end up in a sort of void.

He was frustrated that Minecraft still wasn’t working. They ended up playing Apples to Apples together. Carly tried to argue that boomerangs are friendly and hamsters are not, using an evil hamster they once had as evidence.

We discussed the term ‘wog’, realizing it is also a racist Australian term. We were trying to find an alternative. Carly then went for a walk. We opened and played Mastermind (which he got for Christmas) and he had strawberry yogurt. Then a lot of piano playing and scales and chords. I found some mode charts to make or print out. He was making new sounds in the synth. One was called “weird” but then he changed it a bit and called it “Multicellular.”

He was hungry, so I made a small regular quesadilla. I then made a turkey and avocado sandwich on toasted sourdough. He mentioned sunspots, so we looked at them on the Space app and read about them on Wikipedia. Carly broke my glass water bottle upstairs, knocking it off the cursed table in the office where I also broke one of the glass containers for the science set and tipped over a full glass of tea when I was working and set it down on part of some thing already on the table.

We played at the table for a while. The bread was getting a bit dry though so it was hard to eat. He nibbled at it for quite a while, so I asked if he wanted it in quesadilla form and he said yes, so I made a turkey and avocado quesadilla, which turned out really good. Carly and I were talking about meal ideas and joked about doing equal work. August loved this, and contribute and equitable were words of the day.

I read a few questions in What If? to him, and we learned about Chernobyl. He made more sounds in the synth and was then trying to “push our buttons” and was doing lots of laughing (saying “contribution” to Carly, watermelon to me). But he was getting kind of frantic between each activity.

He played the chromatic scale for carly.

We were all going to walk over, to the mall and go to the grocery store. They changed the plans, and he and I were going to bike, but he was concerned about rain and didn’t want to go. I had gotten the bike all ready so brought it back in. Eventually, they went by car and I stayed home and worked.

They got something at the coffee shop, did grocery shopping, and read a Magic School Bus book. They stopped for strawberries on the way back. He had another meltdown over Minecraft when they got home when it still wasn’t working. I talked to him and he cleaned up the markers he had knocked over. He played piano and did alone time. I think he watched videos for his time.

I went for a run and came back and took a shower. He had watched a lot of educational videos. Carly had tried to make a rice dish, but there were bugs in the new bag of rice. I made a strawberry smoothie and he played more piano. He talked about a laser machine that Bar made, then we built with Legos.

August said to Carly, “Remember that terrific apple I got? Hmm, I think that’s the first time I’ve said terrific.” As she went to get him one he said, “The chance of the inside being moldy when we cut it open is slim.”

He watched a couple more educational videos, then Carly gave bath and I did dishes. Carly said good night at 9. He had some Cheerios and we did pretend Apples to Apples. We listened to Circle Round’s “Sweet Corn and Clever Rabbit” and “The Cousins”. August said, “I think we did telephone at preschool one time.” We had the lights off and listened to a Charles Ives album. He was asleep at ten.

Sewing:

New synthesizer sound:

Zinnie cam: shopping in Tiv Taam:

A toy piano song:

Zinnie cam: writing an equation:

He called down a bit before 7:30. I went up and we got in bed for about twenty minutes before we went down. He was a bit stuffy. Downstairs he sat on the couch and told me how he had discovered that the moon was speeding up the earth until in billions of years day and night would happen every few seconds. I read the second question, about throwing a baseball at 90% the speed of light, from What If? Hé then referenced the video about how fast you can hit a golf ball (Smarter Every Day?) and said he used a particle accelerator instead.

We then move to Minecraft. “I’m scared to the brim of lava.” It was hard for him to stop, as he just wanted to keep teleporting and see where he ended up. He played piano, and we watched the Odd Quartet video on making scales. I then made posters to hang above his toy piano to show the formulas for major and minor scales. He was being a difficult student though, and not listening very well. He refused to believe me that there are just twelve major scales. He tried to make an analogy to biology and chemistry, where a few types of elements or cells make millions of different things. Anyway, I did also introduce the idea of pentatonic scales as he wanted scales that didn’t have 7 notes. So pentatonic was a word of the day.

He played with his synth and at one point said, “I mess around with synthesizers… I’m a synthesist.” I did laundry and sewed up a whole in the pocket of a pair of pants. He made rubber band instruments again. Talked to the Grandma and the Grandpa of the Brother and Sister family. They were telling him crazy stories of the past, and the Grandpa didn’t like his music, but the Grandma did. He then came and practiced a little sewing.

He would have done more but Gilad was then ready for Minecraft and they played in the Greek world. I got to explain the Colossus of Rhodes and a couple of things to him, and remind him several times that it was a Greek world and not Roman.

While they were playing I made a lunch of baked salmon, my own version of the rice and peas dish from school, and chocolate milk. August came to the table and ate as he played with Gilad. Gilad left, and August started teleporting to high heights in Minecraft and letting himself fall. When his battery was getting low and he was falling from a million blocks up I let him leave it on, but he kept sneaking more time. I sorted through all of the extra books we had, along with some that Carly had done, and we have five bags to donate to the library book swap. I put them all in the car and took two into the library later. He also listened to some

When we got ready to go, at 2:30, it had been raining on and off. Pretty good now though. At school he told me about his design for a helicopter that could hold ten people. He had me ordering machines from his lab. We went to the library for a while and he did some art on one of the computers. It was Friday, so the library closed at 3, but I’d forgotten it was a half day with teacher in-service in the afternoon (should have taken Eve and Zoe today, if they were free). Anyway, we saw Maya and Ben in the library, then when the bell rang I went to check out the Lumberjane books but realized the librarians already had their computers off so I didn’t worry about it.

We went to find Carly. Her room was locked, so we went back and hung out in front of the library, in the chairs. I read from What If? We kept seeing people: Tessa, Mandy, and then Jeff on the walk to Carly’s room. August kept asking who they were. He actually recognized Mandy right away but asked “Are you Mandy?” And she threw him off by initially saying no.

We went to Carly’s room when she was back from her meeting. She had a bag of oranges we had bought from GAIA that we needed to take home. He spun in her chair, then drew on the whiteboard, making a game of scribbling over the work on her laptop.

We got home and he went inside quickly before it could start raining. Pretty good timing, as about 15 minutes later it started pouring. He wanted to show Carly how he was falling from millions of blocks. She eventually agreed to that, and they looked at that for a minute. He settled down to the piano and played for a good long time, then asked for his iPad time. He and I played in the Greek mythology world.

We got him mac and cheese and carrot for dinner, but he barely touched it. He is now sick of broccoli, having had it a lot recently. Instead, he did a lot more piano playing. Carly asked about the sings with the Ws and Hs on them, but he didn’t want to tell her. We spent a lot of time discussing scales though, and he eventually was trying to make the major and minor scales on his own and was starting to figure it out. He then wanted to both do the modes and was explaining how they are circular, and I said we’d get to that, and find some other sort of scale to learn. We settled on the blues scales, and I’ll do those next, along with the pentatonic scales.

He got distracted on something else though, and eventually asked for his educational videos. He watched the two Kurzgesagt videos on the size of animals. He then painted (mixed colors) with Carly and had apple and peanut butter. When he needed to use the bathroom he said he was going to make a color called “Total Brown” and then came up with the name “Linear Light” He then asked how long it would take for a slug to reach the edge of the Milky Way. No idea how to answer that one, really.

He spent some time on the graphing calculator, and actually figured a couple of things out. I got our Apples to Apples and we played together. He actually chose to play, although then it became clear he had to win every round. One time the category was ‘rich’ and he chose broccoli and argued, “Broccoli is RICH IN NUTRIENTS.” When we were done we were cleaning up and I said, “I lost the lid.” He replied, “Yep. You totally lost the game man.” Not what I meant.

We went upstairs. He fought a bath but Carly eventually got him in. We continued the pretend Sister and Brother playing Apples to Apples game. In bed we listened to a Circle Round he chose, put on some music, and he was asleep around 10.

Dramatic progression:

Zinnie show: falling in Minecraft:

Zinnie show: falling from even higher:

Two scales:

Pixels on the library computers:

Writing on mama’s work on the smart board:

Arguing for fun, with a backwards shirt:

It was an odd, long day. I had an advocacy planning meeting at Sabeel at 9. I had rescheduled Gilad and Eve for earlier in the week because of it. August had gone to sleep at a good time last night, and woken up early yesterday, but now was sleeping in. I had everything in the car and woke him up at 7:30, had him go to the bathroom, and then carried him out to the car in his pajamas. According to Waze our ETA was 8:53. Perfect. I had a change of clothes, but then, on the way out of town, realized I’d forgotten his shoes. Drove back and got them, and our new ETA was 9:02. No bother, as they only open at 9 and never start on time.

Well, it all went fine until 2.7km before the interchange from 6 to 1. We had listened to a few Circle Rounds on one of their compilations. Our ETA was still 9:03. Then we hit traffic. It said a 5 minute delay. But then an ambulance went by. It eventually said ETA of 10, but we were still 1.7km from the crash. August luckily had switched to his iPad and had been watching things (I think Inspector Gadget and then Sarah and Duck). Eventually though he realized we were stuck in traffic and started to get upset. I suggested opening his window and that helped, as did watching Sarah and Duck. It was looking like it might be another half hour though and I was thinking of cancelling the whole thing when suddenly traffic started moving again. They had cleared lanes. When we drove by there were at least 6 cars still waiting to be towed.

ETA jumped back to 9:45, but then we hit traffic from ANOTHER accident on 1, and it went back to 9:50 something. We basically walked in right at 10. I’d been communicating with Omar while we were stopped, and it wasn’t a big deal. They did a little review with me, but it didn’t seem like I’d missed much.

August settled in on a chair and played Minecraft, Music, and GroForest. I also took him two sweet pastries from the table. He called out at one point to tell me something he had discovered in Minecraft, but otherwise was great and stayed to himself. He also took a good break from iPad, closing it and enjoying one of the bakery treats.

The meeting was over at 12. He went to the bathroom and changed out of his pajamas and we said goodbye. We took one more bakery item with us. He had also had a good amount of banana bread and strawberries in the car and as he sat on the chair. So not just a pastry-based diet.

We drove to the science center, only to find it with balloons everywhere at absolutely no parking. And there are no public lots in the area. We spent a half hour driving around before finally finding a street that had a lot of street parking. Carly later told me that the Kerns had once given up on going because they couldn’t find a spot. August asked me to call the science center. It turned out they were open, but there was a student conference thing going on. She said it wasn’t too busy though. We had parked between the science center, and the park area that had the bird watching (we had tried to go park where we had before, but that entire street was closed off for something, I think because it is the street to the Knesset). Our backup plan was to go bird watching first, but with this news we walked to the science center.

We ended up walking through the long, skinny park to the north of the science. Really odd, as it is a neglected park in an otherwise developed part of the city. But really, as it felt more natural that way, and we only saw a single other person in there. August stopped to throw some rocks, found a nice stick, and we admired the huge concrete snake statue. I suggest he give it a pat, and he said, “How about a hit? Because I hate snakes. Except for worm snakes. They’re the best.”

We got to the science center, and it turned out to be pretty perfect. Yes, there were tons of high school students around, but they were mainly in sessions, and weren’t taking up the exhibits, so we had free run of the place, except for some tables getting in our way. And there was the added benefit of some special exhibits that went along with it. We first went downstairs where he analyzed the pixels on a tv down there, then we went up and he led the way through the mirror maze again. He played with the mirror column that he loves. He exclaimed, “My head’s like a walnut!” We went to the area with the ball machines and used the microscope thing, particularly on my sweater. I described the yarn pattern as a grill and he didn’t know what I meant, so a word of the day. He analyzed the big mechanical thing, that has all the nobs and gears, etc. that you turn to make things happen. He explained the optical illusion of the screw thing, how it appears to be appearing at one end and disappearing at the other, and he explained the motion of a piston saying, “turns it into a rotating motion like my bike…”

We went to the area where you try to fly like a dragon (standing on the pressure plate) and played with that for quite a while, then with the whirlpool. Vortex and whirlpool were both new words.

As part of the conference today there was a game set up on the floor. It projected from the ceiling, then sensed you touching the image. The guy running it got August to play. We did one word game, then several rounds of a math game. August had fun running around, solving math problems. The guy took a lot of photos of August playing it and asked if he could use them for publicity and I said yes. When the guy asked if he wanted to switch to a math game August said “Of course…Who would not love math?”

When done with that we wandered up to where there is the stomping game, which tests your reflexes. He played it a few times, getting faster, then tried to see how slow you could go. It turns out it stops and gives you a frowning face after, I think, 30 seconds. So we tried it, seeing how close we could get. Crazily, we got 29.977 seconds on our first attempt. There’s no clock running as you were doing it, so that as pretty close.

We then headed over to the shop for lunch. The best part of the day, as all of the students had a catered lunch, so we were the only customers in there. I ordered a toasted bagel sandwich for us. But he was out of tuna. Sigh. He had corn at least, and we had that with cheese and pizza sauce. August also got his usual chocolate pudding and I had a cappuccino. While we sat there we watched a Ted-Ed video about fire.https://youtu.be/YV8TT9LRBrY

August then told me about “negative fire.”

On the way out he asked for a few coins for the spiraling thing. He did that, and I think he was the one that said it looked like gravity pulling things. We then talked about how it was exactly like how mass bends gravity like a balls on a sheet and how the coins are orbiting the planet in the center. We discussed Simple Rockets, and how we try to get the right angle and velocity to stay in orbit and I modeled what happens with the different angles, using the coins.

I then suggested we go outside. He, no sweater, thought it might be too cold, but we then spent a good twenty minutes playing with the ball hanging from a rope thing. I told him about the game of tether ball (having recently told him about four square, another childhood playground game a few days ago) and we made up our own tether ball game and played and played (being silly, of course).

We got going, somewhere close to 4, after using the bathroom. As we walked through the park he told me about what he wants to do this summer: “That archeology place. I want to go to it. And I want to camp. Those are the two most things I’m excited about.” And he talked about s’mores. As we got close to the car he was taking photos with my phone when Carly called. He answered, asking “What’s up?” (I think he’s heard that from us) and had a whole conversation with her. He told her it would take “2 minutes and hour and a half” to get home. I don’t think I had told him that, but it was eerily accurate.

On the way home we started a Story Pirates but he instantly stopped it. He talked at length about creating a really powerful microscope, then had a long Brother and Sister game where they met a new girl who ended up being named Sample who had eyes that could act as microscopes and she helped the Mom and Dad with their dirt research, making it much faster. Also, she was able to solve the stuck-in-May problem, which Bar hadn’t been able to do.

Eventually he agreed to listen to Story Pirates and we listened to that the rest of the way home. Remarkably, he stayed awake the entire rest of the way. I totally expected him to conk out as it got dark and we got close to home. We were home at 5:30.

They played Minecraft together. He used “Tomorrow before that” to mean “the day after tomorrow” and still regularly uses “yesterday before that” to mean “the day before that”

We ate dinner, then read part of The Graveyard Book, then he had seconds. He was then painting with Carly, mainly mixing colors, I think. He told us that his favorite things about airports are “security, the food, and the air.” We discussed possible trips and India, where he wants to go. He was then playing piano and discovered the C Locrian scale and also C sharp major.

We got him upstairs and he had a bath. When he came out he told me, “I used my kidding tricks to delay my bath for approximately twenty minutes.” We started to read “Abu Keer and Abu Seer” in the Arabian Knights book. We then listened to Circle Round’s “The Unjust Justice”. He asked what “doling out justice” meant, so a new phrase. We had lights off at 9:30 and listened to the Dissonance album and he was asleep by 10.

Warming his hands in the Sabeel candle:

Throwing rocks:

Playing in the cylinder mirror:

Stepping game:

Floor game:

Zinnie cam: getting lunch:

Riding the ball swing:

Spinning it:

Tether ball:

Patterns on the walk back to the car:

Zinnie cam: reading to him:

Cool chords and scales:

He called to me twice and I went in to pull the blanket over him. Then just a bit after the first time, around 6, he got up and said his pants smelled like pee. I think he had just had a dream, but he went to the bathroom and changed his pants and went back to sleep. But then right after Carly left he called out to me. I went upstairs and he was asking, “What are you doing downstairs?” I went in the room to find him walking around the bed and looking out the window. He said he’d been awake “for like two hours” and had been playing with the laser pointer. I asked what he wanted to do about getting up and he eventually got back under his blanket for several minutes. He was under the blanket, albeit moving all around the bed, until he got up at 6:50 and we went downstairs, where he declared “I’m bored” as he kept playing the piano.

We finished “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, then played Minecraft. He was grumpy at the end and needed food. He ate a little toast and yogurt, then ended up doing lots and lots of music, before doing some Rezzoch the ancient games in the Brother and Sister stories, where Rezzoch (called by the new teacher) kept getting defeated by the ugly goose. He finally had some cereal, then some Mac and cheese.

I took a video of him being silly on the couch: “I’m pretty jazzy, right?” He had us do arm wrestling, and said the secret was “leverage” — a line from Lumberjanes.

We got ready and took my bike over to the mall. We parked at the bike rack and walked in. We bought three packs of tape at Kravitz, then he did some of his spinning in the mall. I realized the little music store booth is now gone. I feel a little guilty, as we never bought anything from there, buying the melodica from Amazon instead, and ordering the kid guitar for his birthday instead of getting a ukulele. We went to Tiv Taam and got ingredients for banana bread and a few other things. When I went to check out I couldn’t find my Tiv Taam card (it broke off my key ring months ago and I’ve been carrying it in my little wallet, but was always afraid it would fall out). It would apparently save me close to 40 shekels today, so she helped me sign up for a new one. August was quite patient while I did that.

We went out to the playground, and he asked, “Why did humans end up with ten fingers?” We read https://www.seeker.com/amphtml/why-do-we-have-10-fingers-and-10-toes-1799948737.html

We rode home, where I got us chocolate milk. He did alone time, and listened to Circle Round’s “Twelve Loaves of Bread”. We then played Minecraft, then made banana bread. Well, he was mainly talking constantly, although he helped a little. He very, very randomly said: “I discovered a new way to make really efficient waterproof doors: use tons of whale lips.”

In a Brother and Sister game (Mayne I should just call them Imagining Games, as the cast of characters keeps growing and doesn’t always include one of them) he was being a tiger attacking me when I spilled coffee on him (as the General). I remembering ‘passing out’ because of a lack of blood, and said something about Bar needing to save me. I remember resting my head on the couch, waiting for him to attack me again or something. Next thing I knew it was maybe ten minutes later. He had fallen asleep on the couch too, putting his head down in the corner. I woke him up right away, and he woke up very confused. First he walked towards the bathroom and realized he didn’t need to go to the bathroom. I picked him up, and he kept pointing towards the door. I asked why he wanted to go outside and he said because we were picking up Eve now, right? I told him we had another half hour before we had to leave.

He woke up, and we decided to watch an educational video. We watched an Odd Quartet video on a project where he uses a laser to visualize music. August loved that. We then watched the Odd Quartet video on how chords work. Triad was a word of the day. August tried major and minor chords and found a progression he really liked that I took a video of.

My timing was perfect; the banana bread was done so I turned off the oven and then we went to “Jump in the car”. August thought that was a funny phrase and was a little confused; apparently he didn’t know it and thought I was making a joke or literally wanted him to jump in, so a phrase of the day.

We got to school and picked up Eve. We went up and checked in with her mom, and August told Heather some fact. He was then telling Eve a series of facts as they walked to the car. Eve talked about how smart August is, saying her dad said that August is really smart, and also said he was smarter than anyone in the class.

In the car Eve looked at our animal pamphlets thing. August told Eve about the big snake we saw while geocaching in Pennsylvania. Which was two summers ago. Also, he says ‘Pennsylvania’ very properly and clearly.

I remembered we needed to get strawberries so drove down to the strawberry place. August and Eve got out while I went in and got the strawberries. They were playing in the dirt and grass, and kept playing and playing. I stood by the car and studied. They used plastic hose pieces to break dirt and dig, and explored the empty field a bit. They ate a few strawberries, and I finally had to urge them to leave at 4.

Heather was planning to pick her up at 5, but ended up being 5:30 as usual. They spent some time trying to play music together. Eve pulled the bottom of the couch out so they could jump off of it. They went outside together, taking the melodica and keyboard and played music together for quite a while.

They came back in and spent some time apart: she made him strawberry pancakes out of play dough, and he did music on his own. He showed her elytraing in Minecraft, then they ended up doing potions together. I was trying to limit the damage to our spices and soap supply. They ended up using every drop of food coloring, which is at least cheap.

Heather got here at 5:30 and we said good bye. He wanted a Circle Round for alone time. He ended up playing keyboard instead. He played Minecraft with Carly and I went up to work. He came up to tell me he was arguing with Mama for fun. The current topic was that she should go for a run. I gave him some science argument for him to take back to her. He came up again a bit later to ask if I wanted smoothie. I said yes, and Carly delivered a strawberry smoothie a bit later.

When I came down he was talking like crazy about a Mars base and all sorts of other stuff. Carly gave him a bath, and he was then rhyming, like “You’re hairy…don’t forget to give your money to a charity.” We said good night at 8:40 and he kept rhyming. We Listened to “The Most Powerful of All” on Circle Round. He rejected reading first. “Calling all the shots” was another phrase of the day.

He went to the bathroom, then we had the lights of and listened to “The Greatest Game”. I put on the sax quartet album and he was asleep at 9:30.

Changing the arpeggio of his sound:

Zinnie cam: looking at the sound waves:

Zinnie cam: playing the synth:

Zinnie cam: sound wave close up:

Spinning at Tiv Taam:

A full spin:

Zinnie cam: shopping for bananas:

His chord progression:

Walking with Eve:

Playing in the dirt by the strawberries stand:

Playing in the dirt 2:

Playing music together outside: