Update!
Other Skipper news - she will be enrolled this fall in the preschool program at the spiffy public school near our house, which is a Japanese-language immersion program. She'll spend half of every school day* being taught in Japanese.
Admittedly, I never expected that I would have a child learning Japanese, of all languages. But I'm still cautiously optimistic. The school is relatively well-funded and seems well-run, and bilinguality of any kind is good for your brain! And the Japanese immersion program appears to be the easiest of all the language immersion programs to get into, probably due to the relative uselessness of Japanese, as well as the closest immersion program to our house.
Duchess is very, very jealous, which pleases Skipper enormously.
I think it'll be good for them to have separate schools, though I would prefer there to be greater parity. I think Skipper will thrive in a school where nobody knows her as Duchess's sister. Not that the teachers will expect her to be just like Duchess,** but she needs to have her own place in the world.
So I have to learn some Japanese. Skipper and I watched a brief Japanese language instruction video online that left me feeling a little unsettled. Everything about the language is entirely unfamiliar (unlike Romance languages that I might be able to muddle through, or even Scandinavian languages that I've heard before), and my aging brain can't hook onto anything. I remember only the pronunciation of "arigato," a word I had heard (apparently mispronounced, unless there are supposed to be variations) and seen before. Skipper is going to be entirely on her own for homework.
*Starting in kindergarten. In preschool I think they maybe learn some colors and numbers and a few other words in Japanese.
**I've spent enough time in the school to grasp that teachers really do know quite a bit about personality, family dynamics, psychology, and sociology, among other things.
Admittedly, I never expected that I would have a child learning Japanese, of all languages. But I'm still cautiously optimistic. The school is relatively well-funded and seems well-run, and bilinguality of any kind is good for your brain! And the Japanese immersion program appears to be the easiest of all the language immersion programs to get into, probably due to the relative uselessness of Japanese, as well as the closest immersion program to our house.
Duchess is very, very jealous, which pleases Skipper enormously.
I think it'll be good for them to have separate schools, though I would prefer there to be greater parity. I think Skipper will thrive in a school where nobody knows her as Duchess's sister. Not that the teachers will expect her to be just like Duchess,** but she needs to have her own place in the world.
So I have to learn some Japanese. Skipper and I watched a brief Japanese language instruction video online that left me feeling a little unsettled. Everything about the language is entirely unfamiliar (unlike Romance languages that I might be able to muddle through, or even Scandinavian languages that I've heard before), and my aging brain can't hook onto anything. I remember only the pronunciation of "arigato," a word I had heard (apparently mispronounced, unless there are supposed to be variations) and seen before. Skipper is going to be entirely on her own for homework.
*Starting in kindergarten. In preschool I think they maybe learn some colors and numbers and a few other words in Japanese.
**I've spent enough time in the school to grasp that teachers really do know quite a bit about personality, family dynamics, psychology, and sociology, among other things.
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