"This wood is very strange and doesn't have a grain to it, and it's an oddly uniform color and texture. The pieces are fitted together carelessly and the overall effect is of incompetence, rather than deliberate violation of expectations. My additions, aside from being incomplete, are inconsistently spaced and sized when you'd really want them to be especially precise and delicate if you were trying to mitigate the aesthetic problems with the materials. The design itself is very simple and it's not clear what it's going for - I initially thought there were a lot of birds displaced by a fire or something and we needed temporary housing for them in a field where no one would need to look very closely at it. If it's for hanging in someone's garden I would do it in a wood with a very visible grain, and carve it and stain it and polish it and use inks in just one color to do patterns of birds and flowers, or something else suited to the garden, and also I wouldn't do it myself because I'm not good enough at woodcarving to make things people'd want to hang in their garden yet."

The teenager he is talking to squats down and makes a face at him that would reveal that she is torn between being charmed and annoyed even if he couldn't read her mind. She kind of thinks all of these objections are true but that he is missing the point of making birdhouses, which is mostly keeping kids occupied and practicing moving their hands and learning to move markers right.

"Maybe your grandparents would like it? Lots of grandparents love having stuff that their grandkids made."

"If my grandfather displayed my art which wasn't very good in the palace he would pain all his visitors and be doing wrong by all the more gifted artists whose work was not displayed like that."

Oh are they pretending now. That's fine. Whatever.

"Maybe you can just give it to your parents when they pick you up and ask them what to do with it."

"Karen is picking me up not my parents and probably she will say that it's pretty and then stuff it on a shelf that already has too many things on it and is not improved by a birdhouse. If it was a skills-building exercise that's fine but you don't have to treat the products of skills-building exercises like artwork. Most things that people make are not pretty until they have lots of practice, Creation is the only thing that was beautiful on the first try."

"Maybe so. I'm still going to put it on a table with the others so Karen can see it. I think it's pretty."

She doesn't think it's holistically pretty, partly because she built five of these ugly birdhouses last night and didn't really process how ugly they were as art until she was called out for incompetence by a preschooler, but she does think his additions are pretty impressive and that whoever is picking him up would probably like to see them, although maybe they'll be less impressed than she is if he's just like this all the time.

After crafts it's time for lunch.

He has gotten so good at neatly eating with his eyes closed.

The other kids think this is kind of weird but nobody tells him to stop.

After lunch it's time to play outside.

Or sing outside?

Nobody will specifically tell him not to sing outside. The other kids play on the swings and the slide and pick dandelions and pretend to swordfight with sticks. Some kids who misbehaved earlier have to stand with their noses to the wall for ten minutes.

In the long run he will need to stop hurting so he can play with other kids because this will make him happier but that seems like a tall order for today. He sings the song that'll clean his clothes and tries to come up with a realistic but not saddening list of complaints about the school for when Karen arrives.

The adults let them play for several hours and then give them carrot sticks for an afternoon snack and read all of the little kids a picture book.

In the afternoon they play duck duck goose. Duck duck goose is a game where you sit in a circle and someone pats people's heads and says 'duck', then eventually says 'goose' and runs around the circle and is either caught or takes a seat in the other kid's place.

He finds an instructor. "I do not like it when people pat my head. Can I watch the game instead?"

Maitimo can sit quietly by the teacher if he wants.

He wants. He does not actually watch the game because it feels weird to watch.

After they've played this for a while the group dissolves into board games and jump roping and playing catch. Every now and then an adult comes in to pick up a kid. 

He doesn't know when Karen will arrive but obviously he will need to be playing when she does. He tries to join a board game.

There are kids playing uno and candy land and chess and checkers. He can probably join any except candy land because candy land has a kind of absurd waiting list.

The rules of uno are easiest to pick up at a glance so he'll do that.

Then he can play uno!

Karen comes when about half of the other kids are gone. She is handed a birdhouse and told to sign Maitimo out.

"Well. You're still in one piece."

"So are you!"

"I guess I am.

"How was it? Good, bad, bad and you need ice cream about it...?"

"It was mostly okay but when we colored bird houses another kid took the only green marker that actually worked, and when we were swordfighting with sticks someone hit me in the face even though that was not allowed. She did not get in trouble because it was an accident. Also I did not win any games of Uno."

"Aww, I'm sorry. You wanna go home or go to church to talk about tomorrow?"

"Also I'm suspicious that birds don't even need the houses. - church! I want to go to church."