The Boy is Learning French

This is very strange, but kind of cool. I got RosettaStone French, because we figure out next trip abroad will be to France. R. and I both speak and read French (he's better at hearing it than I am; I'm about as good at coming up with something reasonable to say, our ability to read it appears comparable), so it's more in the nature of review for us. T. wanted RosettaStone but I was saving the second seat of the license for R.'s computer and finally, after weeks of nagging by T., I installed it on R.'s computer, but then he went back to nagging for it on his again. I did subscribe him to Babbel, but it appears to be unsatisfactory, in part because it doesn't appear in the doc. *sigh*

Today, T. wanted Rosetta on the iPad, which I had zero intention of paying for. However, it turns out that when you buy the downloadable/CDROM editions, you get to use RosettaCourse on devices for free, and you can have up to 5 users on those 2 computers, so I set up an account for him and got him going on his iPad.

There's a negative microphone/case interaction on my iPad; I thought I'd fix it by hooking up a headset, but the wired headsets I have all have USB connections. I have a bluetooth headset; maybe I'll try that next.

His largely unsupervised efforts with Babbel and now Rosetta have resulted in a vocabulary of a dozen or so words and/or phrases, and demands for me to spell out loud things like "Salut, maman!" and "Bonjour".

ETA: I dug out the ear buds with microphone, as yet unused, from my iPhone 5 box and set him up. He seems happy.

Daily Activities Include: T.'s half day, Julie's Place, class still missing

Today, T. had his half day. Because he is still coughing a lot, I canceled his swimming lesson. He had dinner at Julie's Place with B., and they saw B. while they were there (and both B.'s have the same first name!). R. had T.'s leftovers with rice for dinner.

T. may have a cold, but all of his classmates are still out sick, probably with stomach bugs. I. and A. and C. and A. -- all not there in the class or on the bus.

We installed RosettaCourse on our iPads today, and tried out the earbuds with microphone that came with my phone. It works pretty well.

T. also went on the treadmill today. Both T. and A. are enjoying Dora's Great Big World on their iPads.