Re: Animated stroke order diagrams and stroke order pages on the web

"Sean" <sean@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2006092618041916807-sean@xxxxxxxxxx
So a zippy SOD of a new kanji is just another bit of spice to toss into the mix. A couple of minutes of copying what the SOD is doing is painless and effective, but no replacement for the "copying it out a zillion times at one's desk at home" method.
I wonder if Japanese kids are still being subjected primarily to blah blah blah. Do your kids' teachers provide a more "interactive" environment than was the case back in the 1980s?

My children are at primary and nursery school level. The classes are based around blackboard lessons with printed handouts. The kids seem to spend a lot of time doing printed handouts which they also get for homework. My children also do something called "kodomo no charenji", published by Benesse, which is a supplementary thing not provided by the school for learning maths and kanji and so on. They don't go to any extra juku classes except the oldest boy's swimming, although a lot of the children do. I also do English with my son for half an hour each day.

Basically the school seems to be pretty good, and apparently quite unchanged for the last thirty years. I often get comments from Japanese people that they did the same things my children do (for example, planting beans or morning glories) when they were at primary school. Yesterday my oldest son made a propellor aircraft in a woodworking class.

One thing that surprises me in Japanese schools is the "sansuu setto". I expect people who have had children at Japanese primary school will know this thing, but for those who don't it consists of a set of blocks and sticks and pieces of card which the kids use to do some kind of calculation. What is surprising about it is that the parents each have to stick their child's name onto every single tiny item. It takes hours to stick those little name stickers onto all the different pieces. It's in case the child loses some item, to be able to identify its owner.

Another thing that surprised me was that they only begin doing kana in primary school. They don't learn any reading or writing in nursery school at all, although I expect most of the kids can read and write kana at this stage.

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