So I Caved...

Alright. I have officially hopped on the train of lots of extra-curricular activities. I caved and took Aidan to Grandpa's Kumon yesterday after Aidan 'harassed' me about numbers for a very long time. Yup. Us. At. Kumon. Something I had resisted for a long time.

Aidan was ECSTATIC. He had an evaluation with a teacher to assess his level of reading and math and he simply loved the work sheets and kept saying, "This is not too hard." After Grandpa put together his little packet with homework, the sticker sheet (to accumulate for prizes- never mind he has been getting these prizes since he was a baby, every time we visited Grandpa, he would get at least one, if not multiple of these prizes. Yes, Grandpa spoils our kids silly), he proudly hung on to it all and said, "I am going to do homework when we get home." He even made a special spot on his nightstand for this. The nightstand had been reserved for Lego things, shock troopers, clone troopers...etc in the past.

Our plan is that we will ask him if he wants to do his homework, and if he does, great. If not, maybe tomorrow. Hopefully, this will paradoxically encourage him to do homework instead of fighting about with us.

I FOUGHT my mother about homework, worksheets, and essentially, structured learning. A LOT. There was a time in third grade that I just decided homework was not for me. I stopped all week, and then, I guess my teacher called her and I had to get back on the homework wagon. I also used to find the answer key for various workbooks and just filled them in.

Yes, I was a terrible student. You see, I have a very good reason for being against structured learning environment. But I guess Aidan is different.

Meanwhile, Zoe enjoyed Kumon also. Although I think she had a flashback of being at the pediatrician's office when the teacher closed the door to the room where Aidan was doing his assessment. She started to whimper and cry. We sat by the open door the rest of the time and she was as happy as could be. Amazing that she has memory.

I also broke my own promise that we weren't going to do more than two activities at a time. Thankfully, soccer ended a few weeks ago. These days, we are doing ice-skating, swimming, and Kumon.

However, Aidan has shown an interest in Mandarin. Will Mandarin lessons be down the road for us? Yes, I could just teach him Mandarin, but my kids do best with outside instruction.

As for Zoe, she has shown an interest in ice-skating. Unfortunately for her, she has to be wearing size 9 shoes before she can start: ice-skating boots only come in size 9 and up. The girl is wearing size 6 right now. I am thinking another year and half. She also wants 'homework.' I can't imagine doing 3 activities for 2 kids: That would be 6 activities for me. Good grief.