Tonight I had occasion to recall things my mom used to do to make sure I studied hard or learned my lessons well. Among the more memorable:
- Most parents practice the spelling of words on those weekly vocabulary lists by having their children recite the words’ letters from beginning to end. On Mondays through Wednesdays, my elementary-educated, Spanish-speaking, single mother tried very hard to play traditional, but on Thursdays she got wild and made me spell the words from end to beginning. Her theory was that if I’d really mastered spelling the week’s vocabulary list, I should be able to spell its words backwards; and
- My sister and I not only had to do our elementary school math problems in regular numbers, my mother always gave us an extra set of “enrichment” problems to do, in Roman numerals. My profound knowledge of Roman numerals serves me well today by giving me an extra edge when doing crossword puzzles that require knowledge of things like “half of DCLIIX” as well as the ability to figure out when a movie was made.
Anyone else lucky enough to have a parent with an offbeat sense of “enrichment” activities?
© Laura Genao 2007
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My mother is a math teacher… I got lectures about the mathematical structures found in beehives and plant growth in the tundra. I still have to squinch up my face and really concentrate to figure out which Superbowl or Olympics or WWF match is represented by those pesky Roman numerals. Count yourself lucky, lady
Roman numerals also come in handy when reading cornerstones – you can always tell what year a building was built. William and June Warren Hall, anyone?