The answer to the title question of this entry?  Practice, practice, practice.  The idea of repetition begetting success has hit home here recently, and I'm reminded of the old joke in the title.

Since school is now only weeks away, I'm trying (emphasis on that word!) to get the girls slightly more focused on activities they will do in school.  This is coming in more worksheet like form.  K got sheets on circling letters in a poem and putting together puzzles, both of which she handled with no problems.  J actually asked for a worksheet on long division.  I printed one out after I picked myself up from shock.  I also printed one on fractions.  She did the fraction one last night, with a great deal of frustration.  Again, many of the mistakes were just silly errors, and a result of being out of practice with these skills.  She is such a perfectionist--her perfectionist mother wonders where that must come from. 

We'll attempt the long division page tonight, but with a reminder for her about needing to practice.  I think this will hit home if I tie it in to her clarinet.  She recently received her band tryout piece in the mail and again, had some frustration initially with the challenges of the piece.  Last night, she noticed that sections of the music improved because of her practicing.  I plan to make the same correlation with her math problems.

This is one of the problems I've seen in schools lately.  Teachers have a lot of material to cover for the standardized testing, but little time to allow students to practice those skills.  Unfortnately, the students who take longer to master some skills are the ones who end up suffering.  I'm sure there are plenty of teachers out there who are frustrated by this as well.  I wish there was an easy solution.  I know that not all students have parents who will have the time, energy, patience, and education to give their kids extra time to practice their skills, be it in reading, math, or music.  What happens to those kids?  I don't know, and I worry about them. 

In the meantime, we'll keep practicing.  I'm reminded of a saying I heard once about a stonecutter knowing that the stone doesn't break because of the 1000th blow, but because of all of the blows that came before that one.  Practicing is like that too.  Results will come, and sometimes when you least expect it.