Welcome to Be our Best - Euan

Be our Best

How could I not want to be involved in this?

For me, Be our Best is a culmination of a year’s adventure for Jill looking at what interests her in a changing world where work, children and opportunities are changing faster than ever before.  As globalisation pushes ever onwards and the internet allows everyone to be an expert, it is important to have a unique voice in the world.  Be our Best will allow this and provide a platform for both Jill and I’s views to be shared and explored.

Education is the key to both my professional life and fulfilment in my private life.  As a father of two and a mentor, teacher and often counsellor to thousands of international students over the last decade, life experience puts me in a position to write, comment and share views.  This is the forum.

Children or kids are the future and the way we live on even when we are dead and gone.  Be our Best is the way that we can share ideas for all kids to grow from and provide parents with a reason to move their butts and take a greater interest in the precious time that is childhood.  Equally through re-exploring and revisiting our own childhoods we all have information and knowledge to pass on.  This blog, however it grows, will allow us to identify things to do, purposeful games to play and provide time to share with children.  I think the single most important thing a child can be given is time.  Motivation, knowledge, confidence and playing with your child gives more satisfaction and growth than any amount of technology, money or other substitute for time.

I hope you will take this journey with us.  I have always wanted to be my best so this is another forum for that.  Literacy is a foundation for my success, we cannot survive without an understanding of all things numeric and the glue that holds it all together and reduces inevitable life stress is health and fitness.  These will provide the pillars of posts and tie the core values and beliefs of the blog.

Don’t be a stranger or a shadow in the background, constructive feedback is the key to greater knowledge and growth.  I love devil’s advocate and through using words it is amazing how we can develop emotion and controversy.  Comments are the key and will also give us further fodder and spark ideas for further informative posts.

I think it is time to close this now, now it is your turn, what is the key to be your best?

Euan

Welcome to 'Be Our Best'

Everyone wants the best for their children - and this does not necessarily mean for them to be World Class athletes, or Nobel Prize winners.  We can ask no more from our children and from ourselves, than to be the best we can possibly be. To fulfill our incredible potentials in what our bodies and minds are capable of. 

This endeavour should not have to cost large sums of money, or require special skills and tools.  There is so much that we can do to reach our potential, by utilising the simple resourses we already have, and doing activities that are achievable and fun for everyone.  Books, tools and educational resources all have their place, and can be valuable supplementary additions , but they are not a necessity in order for us all to Be Our Best.

Watching our children learn is a joy and is also a learning experience for myself.  Seeing their capacity to learn both amazes and inspires me.  Children are constantly learning and improving themselves, in everything they do, and they are having fun doing it!  I would love to be like a child again, and have fun learning and growing as a person.

I have been lucky enough to have been a

 full-time stay-at-home mum to my children; and before they went to school, spent time with them helping them learn – from learning to walk and talk, to feeding themselves and then early literacy and numeracy.   Once they started school however, knowing that each day they were going off to learn and be taught,  I felt the onus lifted a little from me in terms of teaching them everything. 

I do however feel strongly that parents should continue to educate their children throughout life.   School teachers can only teach so much to a whole classroom of children, whereas parents can continue to provide one to one personal attention for their children to add to the learning they do each and every day they attend school.

As human beings we all have a massive capacity to learn, far beyond anything that anyone really uses.  I have always been fascinated by stories of people overcoming mental and physical disabilities, and the power of the brain to adapt and heal.  Imagine this power and ability used not just to heal and overcome, but also to improve and grow.

My aim is to give our children the best possible start in life, by helping them to learn, and in doing so, improve myself and my abilities.  This website is a way to share this journey with the countless others around the world trying to achieve the same end.  It is an opportunity to record my experiences, share the knowledge I am gaining, and also learn from others as discussion ensues from each topic and post. 

I hope you will find things here that interest and inspire you, but also that you will add your own voice, opinion and knowledge.