My sister and I can remember growing up our parents would drill us on math multiplication, chinese and more almost daily when we were little. We would cry, we would whine but we would get it done.
And Deb and I have to say that it has taken us both far in life - learning to work hard. Learning to love work and to not see it as a chore.
Now that my kids are of learning age, I have come to expect that they will learn outside of school. We started Olivia a couple of months ago on a book that has 100 lessons on teaching your kids to read. It is amazing what she can do after 16 lessons:
My philosophy is that the more they learn, the easier it will be in the long run. Noah did the same reading book at the same age as Olivia and now he can devour a 3rd or 4th grade level reading book fairly easily.
My greatest joy is having my kids understand why I nudge them a bit with reading and math. My reward is my son coming up to me the other day saying "Mama, thank you so much for giving me math to do. It makes school so much easier" - he gets it. But he is making it challenging for me. I am starting to be tempted to use a calculator to grade his math since it is getting more complex. There will come a day soon when he will surpass my math abilities.
Along with the gift of learning, we have been neck deep in CHA tradeshow prep work. Here is the result of all that work:
Our catalog is at the printers, the order form is done, the samples are complete, the DT projects are on their way to the show. I really cannot ask for much more - except next year I will request that the show not be 2 weeks after the start of a new year.
It was difficult during the Holiday Season as we had to send our kids to preschool and school every day except the 24th, 25th and the 1st so we could get everything done in time for this tradeshow. I will confess I felt guilty about it. But it is done and I am going to snuggle them as much as I can before and after the tradeshow.
Afterall, who can resist when my kids do math like this:
PS - if you are so inclined we are doing giveaways this week for our CHA-W tradeshow peeks! Check out the posts on our Company Blog!
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