Although sometimes you can get busy with your everyday life such as making dinner and getting ready for work, it can be completely enjoyable to spend an evening helping your children with their schoolwork. It can be a great way to relive those carefree moments of your youth and enjoy theirs as well as they tell you about things that happened in their day at school.

Even so, their assignments had been promptly done and handed in on time and usually without complaints. If you put as much effort into the most difficult assignments as the simple ones, usually your grades would be quite high. I try to instill that same attitude within my children.

Art class had always been something of an easier class for me. I had a natural aptitude for it and enjoyed it immensely. The inspiration that could be drawn from anywhere, a crumpled soda can, or the shadow of a tree branch on the wall could give you ideas for something else. I always loved seeing what everyone else could come up with, I think that was the best part of art class. Given one idea, many minds could see it in a completely different light.

I began reminiscing after my daughter brought home a sheet of paper with half of a magazine ad where a beautiful teenager was displaying a crystal necklace glued to it. The assignment was to draw the other half of the image as best as you could.

My son had to make a collage from magazine advertisements. I helped him select a few pages out of the magazine to choose from to put into his collage. A toothbrush, a pair of princess cut engagement rings, a damask sofa, and a charming bedding collection. It was certainly fun to remember the times when I had to do these in class.

He was finished and started cleaning up, but my daughter was still having trouble. I suggested that she try something a little simpler for her. She selected a green and gold set of hobo handbags. We cut the advertisement in half and glued it down on the paper. She tried her hand at it and I thought she did remarkably well on it.

After she was done, she smiled at me and told me that it is much easier to draw purses instead of people. I had to agree with her, but I think it helped her. She tackled her assignment then and ended up with fairly high marks on it. I was certainly very proud of the job she did on it.