You'll never guess.
Wait, before I get to that, I'd like to set the record straight by explaining that my third graders are working on some concepts in math that they haven't worked on before. And when I could see that they were struggling with rounding numbers to the nearest ten, or hundred, in the thousands, I thought that I'd sit down and help them. SO I DID. Because I'm a very caring mother and I started to fall behind in math when I was in third grade and I don't want that to happen to my children.
So maybe I wrote a bit more on their papers than I should have. And maybe when I was trying to help them get their homework finished up during dinner (or breakfast) because grass honestly grows faster than my children can get through one-page of homework, I wrote the answers. After they, on their own volition, with maybe a tiny amount of coaching, had arrived at the correct response.
When Charlie went to school today to drop off something, and he was cornered by the third grade teaching staff, he was told to tell ME (his wife) that I am not to do my children's homework. It is entirely up to them to do it and the teacher's don't even want me reviewing it - or writing anything on it. They want it to come back to school, completed entirely by our children, so that they may assess how the child is learning the subject matter; and our children will learn responsibility along the way.
Well. I Never. What do they think? That I enjoy third grade math so much and I have nothing better to do, I bogart my children's homework and do it all myself?
Alright, FINE. If we're being perfectly honest, third grade math really is AWESOME. But I think with the support of my loving husband, who has vowed to hide all the #2 pencils, this is a habit I can successfully kick.
