Okay, the toy car book is really neat, but it is loud! And annoying. He's very interested in it and it will definitely reinforce some of his vocabulary.
I am vaguely reminded of the toy firestation my cousins got for B. It shouts at you in Spanish and in English. Maybe I should dig that out and pass it along to a family that wants to learn Spanish. I'm sure that will make me popular.
I think I'm going to count the time he spends playing with the toy toward my attempts to increase his Japanese exposure to 20%. Because he sleeps about 10 hours a night, 20% is 20 hours a week. I'm going to give myself a couple of weeks to finish up with work and then really focus on how I'm going to do this during the summer. In summer he does have daycamp for several weeks but for the other weeks I'm on my own.
Today I'm going to talk to some of the other parents at Japanese school and see if any of them are interested in play dates. Even if the kids don't speak in Japanese, being around other kids who are learning Japanese helps B stay motivated to learn.
He told me how to say "Hey, what's up?" in Mandarin today. I've been picking up words from the mom who I'm helping with English. I think he's picking up words from his friends at school. I looked at classes, and our options are an intensive summer program this summer, or waiting until he's 7. Everything else would be really hard to schedule. And there's the fact that I'm feeling reluctant to commit to Mandarin, because it would be easier to choose a language I know.
I think we've hit a plateau. He's not making any giant leaps in comprehension, and we just have to work steadily to get anywhere. It's going to be a bit of a slog this summer.
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