Jiji has been doing some typing practice recently. He goes to Japanese school and doesn't really get enough English writing practice, etc., and besides that, his handwriting has never been so good (in English or Japanese). I think it's a mild hand coordination problem - just his weak point, I guess. Ironically, the thing he writes the most neatly is kanji. I think it is because of all the straight lines. English letters and hiragana have curves and he seems to have more trouble writing them neatly. Anyway, if he can type then there is less pressure on us to improve his handwriting! So I have been letting him type for 20 minutes at a time. He loves it! Some of his best efforts have been:
June 3, 2009:
Monkeys eat apples. Elephants eat bananas. Dogs eat fish. Cats eat bones. Anteaters eat sweet stuff. Ants eat ants.
That was the food chain.
Detective Jiji.
Jiji looked for footprints.
He found handprints.
Jiji looked for handprints.
He found footprints.
Jiji is an inexperienced detective.
June 7, 2009 (this one's about our dog, Toby):
As black as eyes as black as a nose the thing he’s afraid of are pure black crows who am I typing to? Noone knows. That was a poem about Tobias D----.
June 17, 2009 (another one about Toby):
Big big whirlpools, robots grabbing scruffs.
Zombies grabbing paws, giant bugs chasing dogs.
A giant grabbing for Toby’s neck---.wu—wu—wu—wu—.
Toby just woke up from his nightmare whimpering.
He also enjoys playing around with the fonts, colors & sizes. The other day I thought it might be nice to see what all our family's typing speeds are. I knew mine more or less because I sometimes used to work as a temp in the States and England. Anyway, the results were:
Me - 74 wpm
Husband (I was amazed he actually took the test!) - 34 wpm
Dio (age 14) - 32 wpm
Jiji (age 10) - 4 wpm. It took like 30 minutes for him to complete the 1-paragraph-long test... he did it until the end, though! I told him he can try again in a year!
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