An article about teaching math in early childhood

Every other comment to the article is "Montessori does this, duh!", with the occasional "Well, duh, that's how we do it in MY country", so I don't know if the article is badly written or if we're so far out of step with the rest of the world. Being out of step might not be a bad thing either if it's ultimately better for the kids.

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We got a set of biographies in picture-books from SantaThing.

Flipping through them, I'm struck by the same conclusion made in "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit" (a good book about the Holocaust for young children, as there's no violence depicted and the family always leaves the danger zone just in time) - in order to grow up to be the sort of person they write biographies about, you have to have had a difficult childhood. This one was abused and neglected and isolated until she was 30, that one was supporting her family from the time she was a small child... oh! It makes me despair, because clearly if you have a happy childhood you might as well give up now. (The main character, who is clearly based upon the author, realizes at the end of the book that by objective views she HAS had a difficult childhood, shuttled around through three different countries, losing all their money and being poor, persecuted by the Nazis with a price on her father's head specifically, almost dying of fever, losing friends and so on, but it couldn't've been because they were all together and happy, weren't they?)

We have to start locking the nieces out in the cold more often and giving them more chores. I mean, OBVIOUSLY.