Parent Workshop and math

Did you ever have that feeling or thought, "what have I been doing with my life?"
Well last night during the parent workshop I was screaming inside my brain, "What have I been doing with my children's live?" Basically Michelle, the workshop leader, was talking about how playing with blocks is actually a child figuring out math. That playing messily with paint or bubbles is related to studying science. I.e. that is how you learn those subjects intuitively and that if you know them intuitively when you start learning them abstractly on paper it's easier. It's not that my kids have never played with blocks or paint. But have they done it enough?
There was also pattern forming. Basically learning patterns and filling in the next thing is like solving for x in algebra. Also being able to tell the story of what comes next is important to. An example was what you do for your morning or night time routine.
Ironically Noah is actually more structured in this respect than me. It's just his personality. I knew that already though when he popped out looking like Mr. Cheng (Grace's dad, who went to MIT)

For patterns I began to realize that there was a lot of this in a lion dance and Kung Fu class.
In lion dance there is a ritual pattern to how you go about doing the dance. I taught it for traditional reasons of not wanting kids to lose the pattern. But I didn't realize it had any other potential benefit besides that. That's coming back into an important role in my classes now.
There is also the patterned, almost annoyingly so, way we did basics when I learned.

You line up
You bow (to the highest ranking person of importance present or the altar which represents high ranking Kung Fu people that have passed on)
Then you do your opening form salute.
Down one two three into horse stance
Then you do 100 of one basic (10 in a kids class)
Maybe you do 100 of another basic depending on the endurance of the class.
Then you stand up you breathe in and out twice in a yoga like way.
You bow.
Then you walk around twice in a circle with your hands behind you back on your kidneys.


Then....

you line up.
You bow
You do the opening... etc.

One of my youngest students back in the day used to start narrating the sequence. I let her do it. (I know some Si HIng's that would have told her to shut up.) However, I didn't realize that there was any value besides teaching her to run the class at a young age.
I have since modified the pattern to make it not as long. For instance we only do ten basics each so we only go through the sequence once. Less ritual, more practice.
I guess that was a mistake since the ritual is actually teaching them math, which in today's world of programmed drones dropping bombs, is more important, relevant, and more powerful than the physical aspect of Kung Fu.
I guess the emphasis always was more mental anyway and the physical stuff was just a tool. I guess those Shaolin and Tibetan monks knew what they were doing.