End of the Year party

On December 9th, there was an End of the Year party hosted by the Kasai International Society. Paula, from Mexico made a Pinata and presented the way cultural aspects. Taka is familiar with Pinatas because I always make them for his B-day and Halloween Parties. He loves Paula, and gets shy when I tell him he can use the few spanish words he knows from watching Go Diego Go! He always points out that Paula speaks the same language as Diego and Dora. I plan to buy a program so we can start having fun learning Spanish too.
Right now, Taka is kind of in a stage where he prefers to learn Japanese. It seems because he feels he has good enough communication with me, but not with his dad and the outside community. He seems to have natural communication talent (genetics, always carried in a baby sling, and baby sign language history at play here?)
He was watching DVDs in English for a long time, but now his interest has kind of faded. I did start (in a scaffolding approach) start a Taka school upstairs. I was going to start homeschooling, but it is not for Taka and I, so I decided just to read to him and teach him how to read. No pressure, just fun. When I first wake him up, I state the day, date and weather. I give him a kiss, ask him how he slept and then start reading books (he usually snuggles in my lap). Sometimes he will request books. For example, if he hears a strong wind (this scares him) he asks what it is and when I respond with " it is the wind", he requests the book "The Wind Blew" by Pat Hutchinson. One of his favorite books right now is Froggy Gets Dressed. He loves to read books and learn new vocabulary. His grammar is improving too. He tends to use English grammar for English and Japanese grammar for Japanese now. (Before he always used Japanese grammar for both languages.
We sing both the months of the year song and days of the week song with flashcards. We do color and number flashcards and sometimes manipulatives (if I have the patience because he usually just likes to dump things out and throw them). He often requests to read the sight word readers that I have. His favorite is Go, Go. (We also do flashcards and play some games with sight word flashcards.
He knows his upper and lower case alphabet thanks to The Leap Frog Alphabet Factory and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! When we made a paper Christmas tree, he wanted to had the alphabet just like we did when we made a coconut tree from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
He can write the letter T which starts his name, and when he sees an A,T or a K he says "just like in Takakumi". A while ago he said Takafumi, but now he says "Takakumi".


Here is Taka with Paula, a social studies teacher from Mexico. Taka loves when we take Paula home sometimes when visiting another friend. When Taka was a little younger he was kind of timid of foreigners, often crying upon meeting foreign men. When he was about 2 years old, he started to become embarrassed when he would meet foreigners. Now at 2 years and 8 months, he is rather comfortable with foreigners.

Taka loves to pose for the camera and take pictures. He is actually getting good at taking pictures, he still misses the heads and mostly captures the most intimate parts. Funny! It kind of lets me understand from his point of view...that is what he sees all day!

Asim has a beard, and Taka is not crying. He finally got used to beards!

Taka is a complete flirt!