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He was up right at 8:00. He lay on the couch bed, on top of the covers, so I wrapped him up a bit like a burrito and he spent a few minutes there before we went downstairs. We watched episode 2 of Grian’s Hermitcraft VII series, then played Minecraft in our original creative. August made a duck pond. While he ate breakfast he watched the Kurzgesagt video on cancer, which he’s watched before: hypertumor was a word of the day. I was sorting out some of the books that Carly had pulled as possible donations. It is hard to part with books we read dozens of times back in Korea, but most we haven’t read the entire time we’ve been here.

We got going about ten minutes early and needed to stop by the ATM in town before going to Shani’s. Ten minutes is not enough. We parked in the dirt lot, but by the time we walked to the bank and got cash and were coming back I was already telling her we’d be two minutes late. Then, as we were leaving the lot, we were behind a small/medium flatbed truck. As it went to turn out a larger delivery truck parked right in front of the mall. The flatbed truck couldn’t turn left. After 7 or 8 minutes the big truck left and we were able to get going.

We were about ten minutes late, but it all worked out. At Shani’s he was excited by the obstacle course, but didn’t like that it was combined with the sticker activity. Maybe he was a bit grumpy that there was no swing today, but he didn’t put it in words. At first he refused to do the sticker thing, but then agreed to. And he sat in the tent and did two of the numbers, filling them in with the stickers, and she would pass the stickers in to him two at a time. He was polite to her, saying “please” and “thank you” a few times. And then he said he was done, but then said “I guess I could do some more” and they settled on the 4s.

But after that he refused to go do any writing at the table and instead barricaded himself in the tent. When we coaxed him out of there he “playfully” threw a ball at Shani a couple times then barricaded himself in a new fort in the corner by the table. Most of the rest of the time was spent in negotiations/discussions about why he didn’t want to do the writing and why he was frustrated. My guess was that he wasn’t happy with the swing being gone. She had tried to switch up the schedule last week and he wasn’t happy about that, and now this was another change he wasn’t happy with.

Eventually he did a little writing, but mainly did letters of his own choosing: He wrote ‘Sin’ for example, for ‘sine’.

Clean up at the end was then a struggle and he only did so reluctantly and with clear frustration. It was all very surprising as he’s never expressed a desire not to go. On the way home we discussed how he could do writing with me, for his stars, and that that would both make learning the letters faster, and if he did it with me then he wouldn’t have to do it with her. And maybe we could have a weekly goal of a certain number of letters for that.

At home he did alone time and we played Minecraft and I made our baked salmon for lunch. We ate that as we played and our timing just worked out. We got in the car and drove up to piano. That went well, or at least much better than Shani. It was really cool when he started to do the chording with “London Bridge” and he had it, in principle, by the time we left. I told her when 45 minutes had passed, and she was surprised it had gone so quickly. She said it was because they hand’t actually gotten through much. She talked to me about how if he was more focused they could get through more. On the other hand, it also showed how she’s being quite tolerant of his pacing and isn’t frustrated by his distractions. It was a little frustrating though that she seems reluctant to model things for him, although she did impress him by playing part of “The Entertainer” at one point. I think it would fit his learning style much better if she was more willing to model parts. For example, I didn’t know he had figured out “London Bridge” until he had started playing it for her, in multiple keys.

But anyway, when he had gotten through the chords with “London Bridge” it was like a light had gone on, and he realized how the chords make it sound even better than just his one-note bass parts he’s been doing. For the last few minutes he was suddenly making up music, with chords accompanying it. It was very cool.

After piano we walked over to the playground. He climbed and hung off of a climbing thing, which is rather new for him, and did some Brother and Sister games, then he wanted to get going. In fact, at first, before we got to the park, he had said he was just so excited by the chording that he wanted to go home and play piano.

He agreed to head to school though as I had both library books and donation books to drop off. We headed to school around 2:30. We dropped off the books, then were going to go in the kids’ area. But there was a class in there and some older kids in our usual bean bags area. So we decided to go to the cafeteria. He got a muffin and I got a cappuccino. August said of his muffin, “I’ll jump on it like a fox on a chicken in Minecraft.” Which he rather oddly did with the second half of it, seemingly trying to stuff it in his mouth all at once, to the point that I thought he was going to gag on it. Rather unusual.

We were discussing math, mainly mentally thinking about fractions and why they equal different decimals. Things like 1/8. We discussed the size of the Hermitcraft sever. He was surprised it was only 20 or so. I talked about how it was kind of an elite group and he asked what that meant, so a word of the day.

We headed back to the library. I found a picture book called The Monster Who Lost His Mean and we read that. He then spotted The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and asked me to read it and cuddled with a sock monkey as I did so. Finally, we read perhaps the last Elephant and Piggie book that we haven’t read before (at least that they have), I Am Going!

As we were walking out I spotted the Patrick Ness book about whales. I was excited to see they had it. I had read it (or listened to it, I think) a couple summers ago (I remember listening to it while we waited for a plane). August was intrigued by it, so I checked it out. Might be a bit mature (violent, warring whales in it) so I’ll have to read ahead. August was talking about units as we checked it out and asked, “Are there Exawatts?”

He went to the bathroom again, and he told me, “The problem with drawing a circle with the polygon command…you need an I finite number of sides…” I discussed how that relates to calculating pi (the more sides you have of a polygon the closer you approach pi, but never get there). We walked over to Carly’s classroom as it was after 4:30. She wasn’t there though, and as we wandered back the other way someone told us their meeting had just gotten out. We walked over to the high school but never saw Carly emerge. August saw a picnic table with the periodic table on it though and we discussed it for a few minutes. Howard Horowitz, a chemistry teacher, came by and August said, “He’s huge.” When he walked by again he talked to August about chemistry for a few minutes, and asked how old he was.

We wandered around a bit more. We were seeing caterpillars for the first time today. Still no Carly. He saw Maya and Ben Ben by the entrance and said hi, but didn’t want to play soccer with them. Finally, we got walking to the car. Once there I got ahold of Carly and she decided to get a ride home. August requested the crazy music with all the time changes, so we listened to The Rite of Spring on the way home.

At home he was showing Carly his piano chording and songs. For alone time he did some piano, then we started the first Purple Rocket story (a new podcast we had heard about). In it, two kids travel, magically, to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. When his time was done I showed him a Rick Steve video of Pamplona.

We played Minecraft in our original creative world. “What in the Wow” his new phrase and he said it several times today. Afterwards he watched the Kurzgesagt videos on Emergence and what would happen if you brought parts of the sun to Earth. He requested a Wow in the World and we started listening to an episode (“My Asteroid is Blowing Up!). He pointed out that “golden age” is from the theme song. Earlier, at the cafeteria I think, we had discussed what a golden age is and he asked what the opposite was so we discussed dark age as well.

We then looked at the equations for Minecraft cubes: both my original and the much simpler area of outside minus area of interior equation that I’d thought up at the cafeteria. He made things on the scientific calculator and told me, “Here’s the cosmological constant…” He ate the rest of his salmon for dinner, then a full slice of quiche. He was still hungry so I got him chocolate milk and peanut butter and crackers. He was doing more graphing and showing Carly things and trying to give her challenges. He recited pi to several digits. Carly was surprised and asked, “How’d you learn that?” He replied, “Anyway, I have tricks up my sleeve.” Very funny, but his trick is that he’s asked me several times to recite what I know, and he’s looked at the digits on the calculator many times. He gave her challenges like, “Draw an equation that measures the amplitude of a sine wave…” When Carly’s equation didn’t work he said, “For one this is totally nonsense.” And a bit later said, “Just do it. (Sigh)”

I read some How To I lost him though at the point where, in the book, it discusses the longest walk route in Google Maps (from South Africa to eastern Russia). I plugged it in on my phone and then August took over and was looking up walking directions between places. I started to get him upstairs. I failed, as he stayed down with Carly while she finished dishes. When they came up she asked if we could skip a bath today. I said that was fine and August was very excited by his turn of luck. She brushed his teeth, then we headed to bed.

He asked, “What’s grandiose mean?” He said it was from a Kurzgesagt video. He also asked, “what’s decapitate mean?”

In bed we read a little Peter Pan picture book from Korea. Don’t think we had ever read it before. Maybe once. August remembered the characters from the school play. I liked it because it made the plot of the school play make sense, since I couldn’t really follow the plot of the play itself. We then read Biscuit’s Picnic. We had seen a stuffed Biscuit doll at the library and August just remembered the beginner reader books that he had decided he doesn’t like. But when I showed him this one he remembered the general plot, and he found it pretty funny.

He was then talkative and said, “What’s 16 squared…256?” He said he’s memorized that one. He also said, “I’ll give you a massage if you want.” I said that wasn’t necessary, but it was very nice to offer. We listened to Circle Round’s “Granny’s Leather Bag” (a new one) and Bedtime Explorers “Inner Light”. He said, “Have I told you of Peto’s Paradox?” That’s from the cancer video he’s watched a few times now. We listened to more of Rite of Spring and I think he was asleep around 10:30. I fell asleep too though so not sure.

Listening to his teacher play piano:

Starting to play chords 1:

Starting to play chords 2:

Hanging on the play structure:

Showing off his chord progress:

Chord improv:

He was up just before 7:10. When I went up he walked around upstairs and in the bedroom he saw a big container of Vaseline. He said, “You said we didn’t need a big box of this…here it is, right in mama’s bedroom.” He had wanted to get a big container at the pharmacy, but I had said no as we already had two. Apparently Carly had gotten one though for her dry hands. He then got in the couch bed and rested for twenty minutes. Downstairs he watched Phineas Rage videos while we waited for the new Ben Braver book download. He watched for a few minutes, then we played our survival world in Minecraft for the rest of the time. He watched the Kurzgesagt video on aDyson Sphere, then we read some Ben Braver when it finally downloaded.

He did some 3D graphing and we did Brother and Sister games along the way. We listened to the Wow in the World episode about singing mice. He was hungry so we had some quiche, then he played with the guitar. He was asking how you actually play again. I hope his guitar arrives soon.

He started on piano for alone time, then listened to “The Queen’s Gift” on Circle Round for rest of alone time. He asked what passed away meant, so a word of the day.

In Minecraft he talked about how he had liked our dancing on his wool dance floor when we played earlier, and how he likes the Clearcraft texture pack we’re using. We listened to Brains On! and learned about mirrors and sequins. For his educational video he watched Kurzgesagt on the Great Filter and had banana yogurt.

He let me go upstairs and take a shower. He played Blocks while I did that. We then ended up playing in the bed upstairs after he joked about it being sleeping time. He was Myna fainting over and over because of cats. We went downstairs for music time and worked on “Skip to My Lou”. We got through the whole song, and he earned a star for the amount of time. He had peanut butter crackers and more there were more Brother games.

I got him out for a bike ride. He wanted to go the opposite direction of the mall in order to avoid the bees. I headed down to the old highway, and there were some bees down there at first, but we got past them and he was okay. About halfway over towards the entrance to town he at first said it was time to head back, but then he remembered where it went and he said he wanted to do a full loop, going up the sidewalk towards the school. We did that, and also explored a couple of side streets he’d never been on. He didn’t want to stop at the park on Vatikim as he said there’d be too many bees. I stopped us at the close park though to get a drink.

He initially ran away when he saw a kid with a dog on a leash, but then agreed to stay and we could read a book when he had the idea of going up to the top of the sip. We went up there and read some How To. Carly emailed that she was on her way home, and August ‘spied’ on her from the ship and spotted her coming out of the path. He started excitedly yelling for “Ms. Althauser!”

We walked home with her. He ran off past recycling to get away from the dog and Carly followed him and I got the bike. At home I made us chocolate milk, as promised. For alone time he listened to “Grandfather Stone” from Circle Round. Carly went outside to work. We played Minecraft and were “Farmer August and Miner Dada”. He had some stir fry for dinner. He watched “Why Whales Don’t Get Cancer – Peto’s Paradox” and “Death from Space – Gamma Ray Bursts” from Kurzgesagt.

He then went outside with Carly and was doing graphing out there. Back inside she read Clementine. They almost finished it. He lost interest for the last few pages, as usual, as the climax had passed. They went and played piano together. I went over and got him to play all of “Skip to My Lou” and he did the whole song several times. Tomorrow we can work on adding chords to a song for the first time.

He was then asking Siri random questions, like “Hey Siri, what’s the price of the most expensive Christmas light ever.” And “Show me pictures of the oldest grand piano.” He did a lot of Siri searches, both on the HomePod and on my phone.

He played guitar again. He did more octaves and also was able to copy part of a song he plays on piano. He also played the “Asteroid Song” again and played it for Carly when she came down.

We got him upstairs and Carly gave him a bath and then finished the last few pages of Clementine: Friend of the Week. I took him in to bed and we read Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear? and The Hole in the King’s Sock, two picture books from Korea that we haven’t read in a long time. August found them both very funny, but I don’t think he remembered either of them.

He asked “What’s à ‘golden era’?” From a video, I think. He kept talking and talking. Finally I was able to read a little of How To. We listened to “The Boy Who Loved Cheese Too Much” on Stories Podcast then “Puppies” from Bedtime Explorers. I put on some Lullatones and he was asleep at 10:40.

Silly in the bed:

Some writing:

An asteroid song 1:

An asteroid song 2 – full version:

Spying on mama and surprising her:

All of Skip to My Lou melody:

August got up about midnight to go to the bathroom. He walked into the bathroom and started washing his hands. I followed and asked why he was washing his hands. I thought he might be sleepwalking, but he laughed at himself and went and used the toilet first. Got him back in bed when he was done, although he first tried to put his head at the wrong end.

I was up getting ready to head to Jerusalem for a meeting at Sabeel when August got up about 7:20. I got going about 7:40. No traffic this time as it was election day #3, and almost as good as the one time I didn’t see any cars for several minutes.

While I was gone he put her to sleep again, this time for a nap. He eventually told me he thought she was a sleep for a half hour and he told me he did the graphing calculator while she slept. They also walked over to the mall for a treat. That was an adventure, as there are lots of bees on and around the flowering bushes on the way over there and he’s really afraid of bees now. Don’t really know why now, in particular—maybe too many Brave Wilderness episodes about bees.

My meeting went fine, although Omar continues to want to change things, and quickly, while at the same time rethinking/changing fundamental structural things he had decided long ago.

On the way home I initially was going to take a route that took me east and north of Ramallah, but Google Maps changed that on me. I took a few kilometers of new road to me, but ended up on the main settler highway. But then I turned off at a park area and drove through a nice wooded space. Saw an old rundown synagogue, lots of families out barbecuing on election day, and a good amount of flowers. I made a second stop at the Brazil Forest entrance and walked around, then drove the rest of the way home, getting here at 4:15.

When I came in August had started to just listen to “The Gloomy Pine Tree” on Circle Round. I made us both some chocolate milk and he finished the story. Carly had just started making stir fry and when it was done we all had some. He had us rhyming words like addition.

We practiced his piano piece, “Skip to My Lou”, together then he played with the electric guitar. He was detuning it and finding octaves. He then was having a graphing competition with braggy teens. He never actually gave me the graphing calculator so the teens could graph anything, but they just had to admit they couldn’t make graphs that were as good.

We listened to a Wow in the World about animals and mutualism was a word of the day. Carly had gone for a walk, and when she got back he hid under the blanket. He was talking about hexadecimal and converting it and we figured out that 1000 is 16 cubed in hexadecimal. We’re starting to realize the patterns of any number system.

We watched a few educational videos I had saved for him then GoodTimewithScar’s first Hermitcraft 7 video. August found it very funny. We played piano some more and got through most of the melody of “Skip to My Lou” and he showed it off to Carly and how his thumb gets to “cheat”. He then listened to “The Hare’s Tug of War” and “The Road to Camelot” on Stories Podcast. I got him some toast when I had some. Carly got him some oatmeal, then frozen strawberries.

He went to the bathroom and was excited about his big poop. I, luckily, didn’t have to go see it. We went upstairs. He kept singing “Cats, cats, sit on you. Sometimes they take over the school.” in the bathroom. That’s another song from Story Pirates.

In bed we read a little How To and listened to “The Giant’s Daughter” on Stories Podcast then “Owl” from Bedtime Explorer. He was asleep at 10:20.

Guitar time:

Showing off Skip to My Lou:

He came out before 7:45. I was awake but still in bed and he climbed in. He really cuddled up next to me and stayed there until almost 8. He went downstairs to Carly and I got our stuff. Downstairs I read the “How to Play Football” chapter of How To and part of “How to Predict the Weather”. We then played Minecraft in the flat world. He randomly said, “I underestimated the coefficient.” We played one the flat world, which he finally renamed after we had a scare and couldn’t find it in his ever-growing list of worlds after having added several yesterday.

He did graphing and explained the sech function to her and how it goes from 0 to 1. Something he had noticed earlier and we’d discussed. Listened to the Ear Snacks episode about the census. I need to remember to fill that out when it is available. Census was a word of the day. Carly headed to the store at 9:40. He played Blocks and Toca Band and I took a shower. We listened to the Kid Nuz podcast episode and it was about coronavirus. He had Siri play a song called “Coronavirus”. And yes, it turns out someone has already written a song with that name.

They went to school as Carly needed to print a few things. He played in the classroom. I stayed home and worked. He was a little grumpy about something. At one point Carly let him use hand sanitizer. He asked, “Why does hand sanitizer feel cold when it isn’t?” I had made a tuna sandwich for him but he didn’t want to eat it yet so we took it with us. I took him to Mr. Gabi’s. There was an accident on 4 that slowed things a good 12 minutes. We listened to We were a couple minutes late walking in but I had let Gabi know.

At Gabi’s we played with the armies the whole time. Actually, first August ran in and grabbed one of the foam swords and killed Gabi, then we played with the armies. Nothing too exciting. Some moments of silliness, such as when August kept getting rid of the General, eventually trapping her under the desk. He ended up with all of the soldiers, doll furniture, and cars out, so at the end there was a lot to clean up and he was a little grumpy and didn’t do a whole lot. Think he was hungry though as he didn’t eat any of the sandwich on the way down. And he had asked if it was a cookie day there but he doesn’t get one of the little cookies until next week.

From there we went to Ra’anana Park. We started walking around the lake, then remembered he needed a bathroom. We went back for that, then walked to where they’re installing stuff at the music area. The cover part is up and now they’re working on putting in bricks. We kept walking and ended up at the covered playground. Along the way he found an ant nest, we played Ms. Safe and Ms. Danger games involving Minecraft. And he had a story about going back in time to stop Ms. Danger from knocking over her sister’s blocks. I’d forgotten about that story about why Ms. Nice doesn’t like her sister, Ms. Danger.

It had been nice and sunny out, but as we were in the covered playground it clouded over. August suddenly declared it was time to head to the car. As we were walking I jokingly used the word “Maths” as Marc had used it with him on Friday and August had found it an odd word. August responded now by adding ’S’ to the end of every singular noun, so as we walked to the car we said things like “Look at the trees over there” and “I almost stepped on an ants.” August’s timing was perfect, as he started to feel drops of rain just as we got across the street and he ran the last few feet to the car.

In the car he wanted to sit and watch the rain, and he asked, “What’s a broken record?” We sat in the car and listened to Story Pirates and watched the rain. He said, “I see-d a truck! Colin would love it!” August kept climbing around in the car and opening the door to check and feel the rain. We finally headed but when we got here he wanted to sit in the car and listen to the rest of the slow elevator story, which is very funny, on Story Pirates.

We went in the house after 4:30. He did alone time on the piano, then went outside with Carly to play Minecraft. I heard him say, “My super power is not going outside with shoes.”

They came in and we all ate quiche for dinner. He asked Carly to read Clemetine and she read some before he got on the piano and did some playing. MVP was a word of the day from the book. There was a lot of talk about derivative equations. They tried playing piano together but he kept taking over. He was asking for food, and when discussing quantities he said, “A few is a couple minus one, so four to you.” Riffing on his joke/insistence that a couple is five. We watched the start of the Formula E race in Marrakesh. He liked the graphics at the beginning and said, “ It’s augmented reality.”

We worked on “Skip to My Lou” together. He’s almost got the melody down. Then he did alone time and then played Minecraft and listened to the Pants on Fire episode about soap. It was our first Pants on Fire episode and he liked it and requested another, but mainly ended up having Brother guess two truths and a lie things from Bar.

Carly gave him a bath. He was talking and thinking about derivatives and didn’t realize he had a bath, as a few minutes after they were out of the bathroom he thought he hadn’t taken a bath yet. She tried to read to him but he was distracted. They came down and I took him up to bed. He was singing the “Mr. Banana face Guy” song from Story Pirates. We listened to the Stories Podcast’s “The Spirit Moves You”. We discussed raccoons and foxes as he went to bathroom.

Back in bed he noticed how order matters in division but not multiplication. He was talking wildly about math. Got lights off at 9:45 and listened to the Bedtime Explorers “Ants” episode and he was asleep around 10:10.

On the spinny thing:

https://youtu.be/qwhdy2r_nls

Spinning time lapse:

https://youtu.be/wI0RSuwvlWs

Checking on the rain:

https://youtu.be/s0aY574lxew

Cats Sits On You song:

https://youtu.be/Rs59P_TcsmA

He came out at 6 and got me and went right back in and went back to sleep. He was then up at 8:15. He went downstairs to Carly and I was upstairs doing stuff. They went outside and Carly emptied a pot that Eve had used for a potion. Not knowing there was soap in it she poured it on one of the nicest plants. Hopefully it will be okay. He did some graphing, then we read The Last Kids on Earth. Close to finishing.

We played Minecraft, and my account wasn’t connecting to the marketplace so it gave me the default skin that is a girl. August said, “Great. I love girls. I have a sister who’s a girl. Well, a cousin. I don’t have a sister, thankfully.” We listened to the But Why? Episode “Why do people have nightmares?” He was then talking about arguing about something and sang a “What is your argument? Cuz I’ve got some tough arguments…argument…arguments…arguments….” song.

On his iPad he was doing math and making more and more complicated expressions that equalled 4. We read more Last Kids and Carly went to the store. We then watched Grian’s episode 1 of Hermitcraft VII, which is a Minecraft show. It was really funny, and that got August’s creativity going and he talked about building things for Brother in Minecraft. We got clothes on him and we went out in the yard.

I got him outside for a while, and August said he wanted to take down the old lady’s barbed wire. That is, the ribbon that Eve wrapped everywhere. We worked together to take it down and wind it back up. He told me, “I invented a holiday called Hexafestival to celebrate when scientists discovered hexadecimal.”

Back inside he did some graphing and we listened to the rest of the Space Programme episode 2 and then the Fun Kids Science Weekly episode “A Robot Expert & the Gigantoraptor”. He played a little piano and Carly got home. We then started working through Swift Playgrounds, the programming app, and composition was a word of the day. August took his clothes off under the blanket, then did naked math time. He made tons of different equations that all equaled ½. They got more complicated, until he was wonder why log(6)/log(6*2) didn’t equal ½. We figured out that it was because it was a logarithmic problem, and that it needed to be log(6^2) on the bottom. “I did a billion different equations to equal .5! Some even involved trigonometry!” He showed several to Carly and she asked how he figured them all out: “A little experimenting and a tiny bit of POOP.”

I went up to work. They went for a little walk or something, but then wouldn’t tell me what they had done. He also did alone time and they played Minecraft, then they were talking to Chuck and Cherie. He was playing cool music on the piano for him, and showed them how he was burning the mansion in Minecraft. Cherie taught him the word tutor, so a word of the day.

I made a quiche. When he was hungry he ate some broccoli and had a yogurt. He really wanted another Hermitcraft video, so we watched StressMonster’s episode 1. We worked a little more on the Python course on Brilliant and learned about Caesar ciphers. He did some 3D graphing, then we read Last Kids. He realized that adding a 0 in base two doubles and adding a 0 in base ten multiplied by ten. And he said he likes how adding to a numerator of a fraction makes the number bigger, while adding to the denominator makes it smaller.

We ate quiche when it was ready. It rained, and August went and checked on what the weather was doing. He did more graphing, then had more dinner and we did some reading of Last Kids. There was a mention of comic books being valuable, and August didn’t understand why, so we discussed it and ended up reading https://wealthygorilla.com/most-expensive-comic-books/

We went upstairs and Carly gave him a bath and washed his hair. I was in his room, expecting him to come in soon, when suddenly he came in, saying he had put Mama to sleep at 9:36. He was still working on his lollipop. He said it would be a good kidding trick: “If you don’t want your mom to bother you, simply put her to sleep.” And, “I know mama’s weakness: she’s tired at bath time.” We finished The Last Kids on Earth and brushed his teeth. We listened to two Stories Podcast episodes: “Phoenix Feathers” and “The Song of Knockgrafton”, then the Bedtime Explorers episode “Koala”. He was finally asleep sometime around 11.

His improved blues song:

Song with a bass line:

He got up at 7:30 and had some time playing Minecraft by himself as I got things packed. He ate some oatmeal, and we got driving a few minutes after 8. We did some listened to Story Pirates on the way down and August also played Minecraft and other things. Delayed a bit more as we needed to get gas along the way. Didn’t matter though, as when we got there Marc had just left the office (he’d actually seen us driving the other direction) because he’d gotten a call from Bezeq. He’d been without internet for weeks and it was taking them that long to come out.

When we parked Andraous was getting out of his car at the same time and waited for us. We had had similar timing last time. This time, however, as I was getting the stuff out of the car August suddenly started throwing up. Luckily, mainly into the dirt. Andraous helped carry stuff up and I carried August. We just had to change his shirt upstairs.

As Marc, Omar, and I met I kept checking in with him. August felt good enough after a little while to have his Cheerios and then a cookie, and after an hour or so he gave a thumbs up for his stomach. I was pretty sure it was car sickness and he was fine the whole rest of the day. He then also ate a hard boiled egg, some ka’ak, and a few other things through the day. He got a lot of screen time: he watched Phineas Rage and Llama Llama on YouTube, played Minecraft (he spawned several worlds and had fun burning down a spooky mansion). At one point, as we were having a break, he showed Marc some of the graphs he was doing. Once when I checked in with him he was playing Minecraft and said something was “Downeight gorgeous” At the end, around 1:30, he reflected on his time: “So much iPad time: circles a world three times (he had been shocked when he was flying around randomly for a long time and came back upon a village he had already been to), burned down a whole mansion…”

He talked to Marc again about math and science and Marc mentioned a story and I read him https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-just-recorded-the-biggest-explosion-since-the-big-bang More reflecting on what he had done: “I thought about how to get a brewing stand in Minecraft…” One of his interruptions (there were very few) while we were meeting was to tell me that he realized it was easier to find a village with a brewing stand and take it than it was to fight a blaze to get the ingredients you needed.

The plan had been to go to the Bloomfield Science Museum, as we’ve done in the past on a Friday. Luckily, I looked and found it is now closed on Fridays. August wasn’t upset by it, and was fine with finding something else to do. Marc said there is a new trampoline park at First Station. But it closed at 3. I found that the one in Ra’anana is open until 7 and August and I talked about doing that. But then I suggested that might not be a good idea after another long drive. August agreed, and then liked the idea of walking around the Old City and getting food.

We left at 1:45. As I drove to Jaffa Gate he sang a song, as Bar, to members of the Family family, about buying ice cream and getting down to zero dollars, starting with 100 million dollars or so. He then had a game where Brother saw a bomb falling on the jungle, accidentally, from a plane. He came up with Brother saying, “Yeah, extra bolts” then when the flap opens and the bomb falls out flatly saying “Oh no.”

We parked and walked up into the Old City. Turned right and walked through the Armenian Quarter. First discussing Minecraft, and how he is my good luck charm when mining or fishing. He made the rhyme: “I’m your good luck charm of the sea, I think Poseidon’s happy with me.” We were then discussing how old everything was in the city and what was 3000 years old and what life was like back then. He would ask if they had this or that item.

We missed the turn I was looking for and looped around through the south end of the city and into the Jewish Quarter. Unfortunately, this was where August’s water bottle was running out and he wanted it refilled. Otherwise he had been doing a great job walking. I say unfortunately because it was the Sabbath and everything was closed. It was 3:10. Luckily, there was a pizza place selling its final slices. We bought two and a mango drink and went and sat out at a table.

He was asking about things in caveman times, and of food asked why it was hard to get, at least half joking when he said, “Usually it’s easy to get food on your own…you just go to a restaurant…take your coins…” He was then asking how the cavemen would respond to a variety of modern things, like, “What if I sent a computer back to the cavemen?” To all I would answer, “They’d think you’re Poseidon.”

We lost our table after about ten minutes when the guy closed his shop. There was a bench though. Saw a little confrontation between a tour guide and a group of soldiers that walked by, but don’t know what about. And noticed a few tourists wearing face masks.

We kept talking about cavemen, then headed back, taking the short route to the north and through the main market area, which luckily wasn’t very busy as things were closing.

At the mall where we parked we tried to use the bathroom, but the security guard wouldn’t let us in that building as it was closing already. Where do they expect people to go to the bathroom? August was fine though. We drove home, listening to Story Pirates. Some traffic, but not horrible and we were home at 5:20.

He showed Carly some 3D graphing, as one of the new things I had put on his iPad for the drive today was a 3D graphing application. He did piano for alone time, then played Minecraft with Carly. He had soup for dinner, then Carly tried another Neal DeGrasse Tyson book with him. Boast was a word of the day. The book proved a bit much though. He played piano.

He and I then did a lesson on binary on Brilliant. I then found a number converter and he was converting numbers between binary, hexadecimal, and decimal. We went upstairs and I read The Last Kids on Earth. He did more number converting. Carly gave him a bath, and I heard him bring up hurting people at school. He brought it up with me the other day. I talked to her later, and it started as the same thing, talking about how it had been an accidental kidding trick to get out of a school he hated. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but heard him say, “Time traveling is dangerous…if you kill the first germ life would never exist on Earth.” And he talked about going back in time to say sorry, or to stop it from happening:

“I can change the future by changing the past.”

When he came out from the bathroom I had been chatting with Peter about a former coworker at MTHS. August saw it and said, “Facebook? Seriously? You’re wasting your time on Facebook?”

We went in to bed. We listened to “The Great Playground Leap” on Stories Podcast. He showed me a wart on his foot. He also has a bump on his hand (has had it for quite a while) but it hasn’t hurt him. He said this hurt a little now and that it had been there for a few weeks. He said, “Indicator: when your body isn’t damaged you shouldn’t feel pain.” We also talked about when his eyes bother him (I had carried him a bit of the ways back to the car as we were walking into the sun) he said, “My eyes were watering…I think when it is sunny…or something is really funny…” We listened to a Bedtime Explorer, and he told me about triangulation in Minecraft, using the Ender Eyes to find a fortress.We listened to a little a little Haydn piano and he was asleep by 10:30.

Getting jazzy:

Talking to Marc:

Walking through the Old City:

The endless ice cream song:

Ode to Joy in different keys:

He was up at 7:15. Downstairs we read some of The Last Kids on Earth. We then played Minecraft and learned about wolves and dogs on Brains On! We had breakfast and he played some piano, then did graphing. He was making complex things to equal a radius, and said, “I wanted an abstract radius.” He was still hungry so had crackers and PB as we got going. He asked why the graphs for sine and cosine are shifted from one another, and I figured out, based on what we learned about how sine relates to a circle, that cosine measures on the other axis and showed him that. Finally, as we were going he was making up riddles for the news reporter. I had the news reporter say “And this is called changing the subject.” August liked that line and repeated it a few times.

We got going and drove to Ra’anana Park. Gilad and Lauren came in right behind us. Gilad rode around a bit and August walked. August used the phrase “Molten ice”, which he picked up from How To, a few times. August was quiet at first, I thought because he was being shy, but then it turned out he was thinking about math. At one point he said, “Here’s why the volume equation works…” and explained why it is basically area times height (something I’ve explained before, but he now internalized, talking about stacking blocks) and then explaining that “A quarter is .25…”

We headed over to the covered playground. He and Gilad played around, and Sara showed up with Eliza after a few minutes. Today was her birthday so we said happy birthday and she had brought snacks. They were spinning on the big thing and August used a hairclip he found to make friction and heat with it. They moved to the structure to play airplane/spaceship and August used the calculator to make spaceship calculations about how far they had to go, etc. Eliza handed out the first snack: a small box of jelly bean sort of things.

Eventually Eliza suggested moving up to the maze part. August rode his bike up and had me lead him with the snack bag, like he was an animal in Minecraft. Up at the concrete table they sat and had snack/lunch. The next snack from Eliza was a bag of Pirate Booty, which August really liked. August sat/stood on the table and watched Gilad chasing Eliza, and pointing out where Eliza was. He was really excited about it, and said, “I can’t believe they do this.” “You’re crazy kids.” We were also invited to Eliza’s party in a couple weeks. He was telling Sara about what he’s been doing in Minecraft and said, “It’s fun to fall from insane heights.” August never got into the chasing game, but was jumping around with them when they were jumping over a line. He said, “I’m in creative! Hot lava doesn’t scare me!”

Gilad and Lauren left first, and we went down to the musical instruments and played with Eliza. On the floor thing August realized that you could play a major chord. Eventually we said goodbye and got going. By the car he did the spinning wheel thing, then we got driving to Even Yehuda. We parked and walked up to piano.

Piano was okay. They really got stuck on “On the Merry-Go-Round” He seemed stuck on something, but I couldn’t tell what for a while. It was a little painful as they both seemed to be struggling. She doesn’t mode things for him, instead just pointing at the music. Maybe that’s intentional, getting him to work on the sight reading. But then they got through the rest quickly after a point. He showed off his various minor scales (having showed off the blues minor earlier) then they moved on to “Skip to the Lou”, which she had had me pick out of a book. It was painful getting him to focus on reading the notes of the arpeggio, although once he did he easily knew it was F Major.

Things to review:

• note lengths. When she was having him sight read he seemed confused by the half note

• how to tell the flats and sharps

• If you have one flat it will always be the same: B flat

She just kept going with him though, and at 1:55 she asked what time it was. I had thought it was supposed to be a 45 minute lesson, but then though well maybe it was 50, since she went more than that last week as well. She’d just lost track of time. She went and let her next student in. He was 11 or so, and sat down and started playing “The Entertainer” by Joplin. I pointed it out to August and told Dalit we had just been listening to it. August was really excited about a kid playing it and as we went outside he watched him through the window.

We walked to the car and drove to school. We first went to the cafeteria and got a piece of pizza again, a muffin, and my cappuccino. August always laughs now and says “Cappuccino! Mocha!” because of the General. We read more of The Last Kids on Earth. Karaoke was a word of the day. We walked to the library and saw Ben Ben with his class, then watched some of the robotics competition which was being live-streamed on the big monitor. We saw the AIS team. They didn’t do so well in the round we saw, although they were much better than one of their teammates.

We went down and picked up Eve, then went to Heather’s classroom to check in. Eve barged in and said hi. The bell had rung, but Heather was still talking to her AP Art History class—a whole five students.

We went over to the field because Eve wanted to play soccer with her friend again. That only lasted a few minutes as baseball took over. We moved to the playground. August had coped by doing scientific calculators and we figured out the ‘Mean’ and ‘LCM’ commands and I explained those to him. He then played on the playground as well. They climbed around, and eventually August wanted to head home. Eve was talking to a girl and her mom first, and when they were done August told her, “That girl you were just talking to looks like an older version of you.”

We headed home. First though we stopped at the flag poles and I taught them the word topiary as they discussed the person and camel. At the house August had me put the bike on top of shoes so he could do the tire thing. I went in and made strawberries, chocolate milk, and then crackers and cheese for a snack. They played outside the whole time. They had a stream down the slide, made a rainbow, and played in the Zinnie house. August came in and said that Eve was the mean old lady. I went and typed outside. Eve had an old lady voice and was using ribbon as electrical wire around her house. They were pretty funny together.

Carly got home, and Eve got picked up around 5:30. I had told August he could have one round of Minecraft without alone time, so we did that, in the flat world.

I then went upstairs to do some work. They did his alone time and then second Minecraft, and I went up to do some work. She gave him a bath and I took over by 9:30 and read the “How to Throw” chapter of How To. We then listened to”Froggy Lost Her Tale” on Stories Podcast. He asked, “Have you been on the ISS? AKA the International Space Station?” “Do you like my use of AKA?”

The Bedtime Explorers podcast was having issues not streaming again, so I was trying to get an episode to download instead and I put on piano music. While I was trying to get that to work he suddenly rolled over and was asleep. It was only 10:10.

Funny panda in Minecraft:

Craziest graph yet:

Spinning:

Watching the game of chase:

Making music:

Xylophone rhythm:

Changing pitch with the bicycle tire:

Piano lesson 1:

Piano lesson 2:

Talking to Eve on the playground:

The old lady and her fence:

He was up at 7:20. “Time to go down stairs, right?” Downstairs I read a few chapters of The Last Kids on Earth, then we played Minecraft and listened to podcasts, learning about dust in particular. We had breakfast, then he was doing graphing. Irrational number was a word of the day. He found that absolute value and square root of a square are the same and we talked about why. He then asked about sine and WHY it makes a wave, so we learned all about how that works. I initially got a couple of images and threw them in Paper, then explained and wrote on them. I also taught him how to do exponents and division in typing out equations (^ for exponent and / for division). And he discovered that ‘pc’ is the abbreviation of ‘parsecs’ in Siri.

We watched a video on sine waves and learned how it applies to a generator and AC power:https://youtu.be/LrZ46TIZ1-M

We then got going to Shani’s: He ran in, hyper and grabbed the swing thing and was running in circles and chanting things like: “3.1414 bla bla bla…pi is how much bigger the circumference of a circle is greater than its diameter!” When she said something about pi having a lot of digits he responded, “Not a LOT of digits, infinite…irregular number…or Eregular number. Get it, cuz e is also in mathematics.”

They started at the table and she had him sit on a ball as a chair as he did stickers. That worked pretty well, I thought, although I noticed she switched it out for a regular chair at some point. He ‘stole’ a couple minutes on the swing, then climbing the ladder. When he wouldn’t agree to go by the plan (writing first) she then switched them and they did swinging time before writing, which is the usual order of things. He swung around on his stomach for a while, then agreed to do the fishing thing. He initially got out of the swing to do the fishing, but then decided that was too easy.

They moved back to the table for writing. E: “Every single one is gooder than the one before that.” “I did that? Crazy.” He then practiced A before doing some_ Fs_. They then went to G. He asked, “Can we skip to Qs? Z’s? Those are my favorite numbers. I mean letters! Variables! Whatever.” But then was fine doing them in order and doing G. She was doing a good job of getting him to calm down, using words like, “I want to see your body calming down.” “Next week we’ll work on slowing down.”

From there we drove down to Netanya and to Winter Lake Park. There was indeed a big pile of snow in the park. On their Facebook page the city had posted that snow was waiting for people. Well, it was waiting, but it was fenced off. A review of a post a couple days ago said it didn’t open until 1. So kind of odd that the snow was sitting out, just able to have its photo taken, but we made the best of it and walked 7 minutes due north to a pizza place. He asked, “Why don’t people like the taste of Christmas stamps?” Which is from a Joseph’s Machines video. We found the pizza place, then he needed the bathroom. We walked up the big round stair case to where there are some government offices or the such. August was hesitant to go in one, but I went in and asked and we were able to go in and use a bathroom.

Back at the pizza place we got a piece of ‘regular’ (cheese) pizza and a Nestea. It was a big slice, but August kept eating and eating. He had a game where Brother was doing tons of knitting to be rewarded with his favorite treat, which he said is cinnamon rolls. This is also based on a Joseph’s Machines video. Eventually, Brother found out he was in a simulation, and there was a big debate about whether that was a good or bad thing, and whether he should leave the simulation. He did, and it turned out that the only difference was that there were no bananas in real life. And artichokes were different, I think. Brother had been worried that there would be no Minecraft, but there was.

It wasn’t enough food, so I also got one of the things with potatoes and olives and eggs in it. August kept eating, and ate more than half of that as well, even eating the green olives.

On the drive to Netanya August had talked about wanting to learn a language that only he and I could talk. We talked about learning something like Latin or one of the rare/fictional languages in Duolingo, and then I had started to teach him Pig Latin. Now, on our walk back we discussed programming languages and hexadecimal and density of language systems, as we were talking about why hexadecimal is easier to read than binary, even though it is more dense, and then were discussing how many symbols are in written language.

We got back to the snow area. Still not open (a few minutes before 1) so we sat on a bench and started the Python programming course on Brilliant. He liked that, then a few minutes after 1 we wandered over to the snow. Still not officially open. But there was no on around. A school group showed up, but then were just standing around as well. Finally, a dad came by with a smaller girl, and they slipped through the fence and started playing. After a couple minutes August agreed to go in as well. A minute after that the school group came in. A little chaotic at first, with middle school age students throwing snowballs, but not too bad.

August put one of his old pairs of gloves on, but they only lasted about 15 minutes before they were soaked. I had brought gloves and coats, but hadn’t thought of bringing boots, or a change of shoes. Also, in the future I should bring beach toys. August thought it was more like ice than snow, and called it a glacier, and liked that it was rather transparent. We played for about 45 minutes. While he was playing he came up with a couple good lines: “Splashing ice is easier than learning python. Obviously.” And: “The chance of finding a binary star with your eye is the same as making a snowball in an oven.”

When he was done and wanted to warm back up we went back to the bench. He was figuring out different units in the search calculator on my phone. Kelvin, Celsius, Parsecs, etc. About 2 we headed to the car, but he stopped at the spinning chairs and other little toys area for a few minutes first.

We were listening to Story Pirates on the way. At home I let him do Minecraft first, before his alone time, as he argued I should let him try that once ever two weeks. While we played we watched some of the first Robotics competition on Twitch. We saw the AIS team once. They looked like they were off to a rough start.

In graphing we discussed and explored order of operations a bit. I made a list of all the things we’ve talked about doing, as he keeps jumping from thing to thing, and we’d also discussed so many things he wanted to do today. He agreed to start with the 15 minutes of alone time he owed me. He did that, then started our list with wanting to know how to change some of the settings on my camera, so we did that first and he took photos for a few minutes. We then started, well continued since we’d started on the bench at the park, the Brilliant course on coding in python. He was hungry, so had a bowl of soup and then we did more more coding.

Carly got home just as we were moving into the next chapter/quiz on Brilliant and August excitedly read out every little program to her, parentheses and all, excited that he could understand it and she couldn’t. She was home early and went upstairs to rest or work. We did more programming, then he did more graphing. I did the dishes, then he was ready to move on, first by doing alone time. He spent the whole time at the piano. He excitedly told me he could figure out how to do “Ode to Joy” in every key, and showed me it was based on knowing how many steps and half-steps were between each note. That way he could start from any key and know the intervals.

We did Minecraft, then Joseph’s Machines videos: the ketchup and mustard one and the big alarm clock. Carly came down. I got him peanut butter and crackers, then I went for a run. They read a little of the Sid the Science Kid book. I had suggested he do some reading, and she asked him to read half of the words. He obliged by reading the first half of each word. They didn’t get very far. I think she read something else, then they watched a documentary on Curiosity Stream about the Large Hadron Collider. After I got back and took a shower we played piano together. We played the blues minor and pentatonic scales and reviewed minor scales. August was actually copying and playing along to a line I was playing in the blues minor scale and it sounded really cool.

He voluntarily headed upstairs to Carly when we were done. She gave him a bath, then we said good night. I had to run downstairs to fill up his water bottle, and he had the Seuss app read him a couple of stories. He then read a few pages of Hop on Pop to me. I then read the lava most chapter of How To. He was doing yoga poses, and pulled his feet up to his mouth and was kissing them, and said, “My footsies!” We listened to the new Circle Round story “The Mountain Spring”. On Bedtime Explorers we listened to “Snake” and he fell asleep before I put on any music, about 10:20.

Using the ball as a chair:

Fishing from the swing:

Snow in Netanya 1:

Snow in Netanya 2:

Song of the day:

Song of the day 2:

Playing jazz together:

More jazz together:

Playing with his feet:

He got up at 6 and called me, but then went back to sleep easily. He called me up again at 7:30 and he lay on his bed for quite a while, waking up. Eventually we went downstairs. I read a chapter or so of The Last Kids on Earth

We then played Minecraft, doing more building and terraforming. The mountain is getting pretty big. He watched a couple Joseph’s Machines videos and I made bacon and eggs for breakfast. We ate and he started doing some graphing. He’s really into t and how he can use it to make cool pictures. He was a girl selling graphs as art and selling it to Brother. We were listening to podcasts all through the morning, learning about things like kids doing science on the Galapogas Islands, Antarctica, and strange matter. We also listened to the first episode of the Space Programme.

As he was graphing he asked about double factorials, and we figured out how 3!! and 4!! work, and thought it was really amazing that the difference between the two is literally hundreds of sextillions (or so). He had been asking how to calculate pi, or why pi is what it is, so I looked up an article on 5 ways to calculate pi. When I got him off the iPad I tried to do them with him, but he didn’t give it a chance and was calling it boring, so I gave up for the time being and went to brush my teeth instead.

Back downstairs he made music using the chromatic scale as I made a strawberry smoothie. We came up with a “Chromatic snail” song as it went up the keyboard. We drank the smoothie, then got ready and headed out on errands.

We drove down to the complex with Ace and went to the pharmacy down there. Got several things on our list, but masks (Carly wanted more) wasn’t one of them, as they said everyone is out. We then went to Ace. I wanted to actually ask about a Dremel tool. It took time to find someone to ask, and I spotted rotary tools, from both Dremel and Skil high up on a shelf. August started to sing an “infamous of the genitalia” song so I had to explain what that word meant, and why he shouldn’t sing it in the store. Eventually I got some help and ended up buying a Skil model for about 70 dollars.

We then headed to Tiv Taam. He chose a treat from the bulk candy area and did a great job with all the errands. We also bought the heart toilet paper, which he’s been asking for for months.

We headed home. He’d done so well I told him he could have his first Minecraft time without doing alone time. We played Minecraft, then he watched Kurzgesagt videos. We had the pea soup/noodle dish for lunch and watched a Mumbo Jumbo video where he makes a TNT cannon in Minecraft. We then watched a Vox video on malaria and using a gene drive (CRISPR). He was then a polar bear under the blanket. He had tomato soup, then did alone time. He then said, randomly, “An affiliate of the University of Washington” literally seconds before I played KEXP. When you start the KEXP stream it always says that. I don’t know if he had heard the alarm that goes off on my phone at 4 to remind me the Morning Show is starting, or just his brain remembered that it was the time that he often hears that phrase.

We played Minecraft, then I was trying out the rotary tool. August was playing around a bit outside, and was outside when Carly got home. He went in and did graphing, then had a bowl of soup, after which he had his pudding from the other day. Carly spent some time cleaning out and organizing our kitchen cupboards. I went for a run, and they finished the Astrophysics bok.

Carly went to the store, and we did piano time. A little work on “Good King Wenceslas”, then taught him the pentatonic and minor blues scales. He did some math and graphing, and repetend was a word of the day. He also asked about negative exponents, so I taught him how they work.

Carly got home and he played blues licks for her and was then showing her complex chords and scales. She got him up for his bath. In bed I read him Chester’s Way, by Henke, which I’d checked out a while ago. We then listened to “Mr. Rat and His Lovely Daughter” and “The Boggart” on Stories Podcast. We put on a Bedtime Explorers (“Unicorn”) and he fell asleep soon after, to more piano music, around 10:30.

Making a song with a bass line:

Admiring hair colors:

His first blues and jazz:

He really yelled “Dada! Dada!” a little before 4. Not sure what was up when I went in. He went right back to sleep. I think I heard him call out again a while later but I didn’t have to go back in. He then called out loudly just after 7. He lay back down but got up after a few minutes. Downstairs he lay on the couch for several more and I put blanket on him. I read the How To part about moving a house through the air, then August turned it into a Brother and Sister game where Bar moves their house with jet engines.

We played Minecraft and he had oatmeal. He then watched a video on the Bermuda Triangle from The Infographics Show. He’s asked about the Bermuda Triangle a few times. He then watched a Brave Wilderness video about five alien-looking animals they’ve found. Helgomite (sp?) was our favorite, and a word of the day. Derek in Korea told me their school is now closed, for at least a week, but he thinks it will be longer.

He did some graphing, then we did music time. He practiced “Good King Wenceslas” and made cool rhythms on the metronome. He cleaned the other toilet to finish earning his star, as he cleaned one yesterday. He started doing division of odd numbers in his head: “What’s 5 divided by 2? 2.5. What’s 9 divided by 2. 4.5…” He had 5 stars, so used it to get an extra 30 minutes of iPad time.

As we played we listened to a What If World (about a greedy tree) and the Wow in the World episode about Betelgeuse (yesterday we had listened to “Good Habitat Keeping”) and the Brains On! called “For Crying Out Loud”. I made the Geologic Time poster as we finished that and hung it in the bathroom. He did more graphing and math, creating an equation for how much rocket fuel he needed for something. We were listening to the Every Little Thing podcast about sketch artists.

We got ready to go. We drove up into town and went to the pharmacy, where we bought hand soap, hand gel, and three masks. You have to ask at the pharmacy for them and they are down to their last box. August was a bit incredulous that we’d be doing anything about the coronavirus.

We then headed to school and got to the library, where it is Library Tech Week, just as the robotics team was getting ready for their presentation. August really liked that, and when they lifted the robot up so the kids could see its brains and asked the kids to move closer August ran up and got a seat right at the front.

After the presentation was over we walked around and looked at some of the things the library had out. Sadly, they don’t have toys out like they did before, when they had all the building toys out. They had computers set up though where there were things like a body synth which played music based on how much you moved. That as our favorite, although it didn’t do much.

We then headed over to the cafeteria, as he was hungry. We got a long slice of pizza with corn to share, and I got him a chocolate cookie and I had cappuccino. We went back over to the library and looked at the robot art out of recycled materials. Heather came along, who was responsible for it all, and I had August show her his favorite piece. I talked to her for a few minutes about finding Dremel tools in Israel. August was taking photos and took photos of her, and was also twirling around fast to do crazy panorama shots.

Back in the library I found the picture book The Music of Life by Elizabeth Rusch, which is all about Bartolomeo Cristofori and his invention of the piano. In it, it talks about famous composers for the piano and I added an album of each to our Apple Music library to listen to later. Midway we moved out to near the chess games when a class came in. We sat on a bench and August cuddled in the stuffed animals but payed attention.

I checked out a magazine called Beanz, which is all about kids and computer science. Turns out they have a whole stack of them. I’d been looking for the new Scientific American, as I had seen the cover and think it has something August would like, but they didn’t have it.

We headed out. They have the ribbons down, so you can go on all of the grass now. August ran in circles on it to wear it out. We stopped at the guard station to pick up the Amazon box from Cherie. It’s August’s presents. The car really smells of warm strawberries after we left the strawberries in the car for a couple hours the other day when we were at school. I talked about how it permeated the car and August asked what that mean, so permeate was a word of the day. We also quarantines (another word of the day) and why we got soap etc. He turned on the AC as cold as it could go because he could.

On the drive home we listened to Scott Joplin and I talked about how music at the time of these songs spread through sheet music and speculated about ragtime being played on our piano back when it was young. That was a cool thought.

At home he did alone time and we played Minecraft. Carly got home and I went for a run before it got dark. She went up to town to buy a few more things; they were out of masks by now. August was trying to tell me that “a couple” means 5. I asked him where he got that idea. He told us, “Well you two. You two were arguing about it and I got my opinion.” Carly and I had indeed once debated how precise the definitions of “a few” and “several” are, but I don’t remember “a couple” ever being open to debate.

While he was graphing he figured out radians, telling me, “A full circle is two times pi…” “and I turned it into a mind blender…”

Carly gave him a bath, and in bed we listened to two Stories Podcast episodes, “The Greedy Dog” and “Wiggly in Walt Disney World!” (Which he hadn’t liked the first time we tried it because it wasn’t a folk tale, but liked this time). He was whiney about more Cheerios, and I finally got him some. We skipped a Bedtime Explorer today and listened to Haydn piano music and he was asleep at 10:35.

Crazy metronome:

Making crazy graphs:

Robotics team:

Up close to see the robot:

Visual synth:

Visual synth 2:

Running to wear out the grass: