Just the usual things I think about

I had a bad cold on the weekend, so we didn't get a lot of practice done. B still went to class, of course, and he played with some of his Japanese apps on our iPad. I think I managed to read him a book or two.

He is getting more consistent about trying to speak in Japanese, and is now trying to form sentences. I hear, "mom, help" in Japanese a lot. It's like he decides on a phrase of the week and uses it over and over until he's comfortable with it. Very cute.

I am starting to look at adding the third language. He now wants to learn Mandarin. He still wants to learn French, but I don't think there are enough hours in the week to learn and maintain 4 languages, especially since he plays the cello and next year will be old enough to join the pre-junior orchestra. Both French and Mandarin lessons are fairly easily available in our city. I'd like to start the next language next fall; hopefully he'll have decided by then.

Because he does so many things, he's the weakest in the class in each activity. In Japanese all the other kids have at least one parent who is fluent or native. And in his cello class, all the other kids have a parent or an older sibling who either plays the cello or played another orchestral instrument. He just plain doesn't have the time required to out practice the other kids and we don't have the background to make his practice more efficient. But I'm just going to keep going because he seems to want to keep going. It's possible he's too young to have noticed that the other kids are progressing faster.

I have considered homeschooling him, as that would give us more time for science and math as well, but he enjoys school. Kindergarten is easy and fun. A friend has suggested dropping an activity, or rather dropping practicing one activity. So just letting him attend classes without doing the daily practice. And I've noticed other families do this: their kids just attend the classes and they don't worry about it in between. So that's an option, although I would have trouble doing this.