Nautigal, we're with Connections. They take the attitude that if they offer the class, we're stuck with their offerings (as awful or poorly supported as they might be in pragmatic terms) and they won't pay a dime for external ANYTHING.
Local schools won't work with Connections to seat kids for just one class because it's completely uncompensated (can't really blame them, actually).
Puts kids in the middle, though, if they object to, say, only having a "teacher" for 32 hours a year in a foreign language class. I think that it probably goes without saying that if my hunch is correct, we'll see more like 10-12 hours this year in particular. The last teacher was very efficient and very caring-- thus the 32 hours. (About one a week, with a few missing weeks at the end of each semester).
Epoh, I think that DD actually has a VERY good ear. She was picking up conversational French after just a long weekend in the country-- Parisian French, no less, and in overheard conversations. She hasn't ever had enough French that it should have been possible. She also was more than capable of eavesdropping on German tourists throughout the UK and France while we were there, which was sometimes deeply amusing. Okay-- total tangent and adult-swim here, but you should have SEEN how red she turned when she realized just WHAT that couple was speculating about in the Irish National museum as they were looking at breastplate decorations and bronze seals, many of which just... happen.... to be shaped like, er-- well, like "adult" toys. AHEM.
Yes, she picked all of that conversation up just fine. (Of course she did...)
Her
written skills are not very strong, but her listening and reading skills, not too bad.
