"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Well-said. Hard as it can be, try to temper the sadness with good memories - you may even find yourself smiling through the tears at times. Take care.
Back in the day (1993!), my 3-year-old loved the delightful Living Books collection software. The interactive CD-ROMs came bundled with paperback versions of the simple books they animated, which were written by popular children's authors. A nice touch that got children interested in reading the physical books by themselves, eventually opening up the whole world of reading to them. Maybe someone's aware of whether there are apps that are today's equivalents. If you're interested, video playthroughs of the software titles are collected at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCAF301BEC1CA0D5D
Btw, if you haven't seen it, check out the book Teach Your Baby to Read. The first chapter in the free sample at Amazon gives a reason for why more children don't read at an early age ("We make the print too small"). Which helps explain why some children manage to learn to read words from commercials and TV shows (like Sesame Street!) - which often display words in big type as they are read by an announcer's clear voice - on their own long before they hit school. https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Baby-Gentle-Revolution/dp/...
Also expressing concerns about the selection of suitable languages for novice programming is King's College CS Prof Michael Kölling, who explains, "One of the drivers is the perceived usefulness of the language in a real-world context. Students (and their parents) often have opinions which language is 'better' to learn. In forming these opinions, the definition of 'better' can often be vague and driven by limited insight. One strong aspect commonly cited is the perceived usefulness of a language in the 'real world.' If a language is widely used in industry, it is more likely to be seen as a useful language to learn." Kölling's recommendation? "We need a new language for teaching novices at secondary school and introductory university level," Kölling concludes. "This language should be designed explicitly for teaching [...] Maintenance and adaptation of this language should be driven by pedagogical considerations, not by industry needs."
While noble in intent, one suspects Kaplan and Kölling may be on a quixotic quest in a money wins world, outgunned by the demands, resources, and influence of tech giants like Amazon — the top employer of Northeastern MSCS program grads — who pushed back against NSF advice to deemphasize Java in high school CS and dropped $15 million to have tech-backed nonprofit Code.org develop and push a new Java-based, powered-by-AWS CS curriculum into high schools with the support of a consortium of politicians, educators, and tech companies. Echoing Northeastern, an Amazon press release argued the new Java-based curriculum "best prepares students for the next step in their education and careers."
