First Lady Michelle Obama's Advice For Her Daughters - And Yours!

Although most of us grew up learning about the 3 R's: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, and are still trying to make sense of it, in a recent trip to Britain's elite Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, First Lady Michelle Obama shared that for her daughters, Sasha, 9, and Malia, 12, she and President Obama have a different motto: "Read, Write, Read, Read."

"If the president were here - one of his greatest strengths is reading. That's one of the reasons why he's a good communicator, why he's such a good writer," said Mrs. Obama. "He's a voracious reader. So we're trying to get our girls, no matter what, to just be - to love reading and to challenge themselves with what they read, and not just read the gossip books, but to push themselves beyond and do things that maybe they wouldn't do.

So I would encourage you all to read, read, read," the First Lady continued. "Just keep reading. And writing is another skill. It's practice. It's practice. The more you write, the better you get.

"Drafts -- our kids are learning the first draft means nothing. You're going to do seven, ten drafts," Obama adds. "That's writing, it's not failure, it's not the teacher not liking you because it's all marked up in red. When you get to be a good writer, you mark your own stuff in red, and you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite. That's what writing is."

Sounds like Malia and Sasha are on track to follow in their dad's best-selling footsteps!