Pre-School+and+Elementary

I learned to write my name and the ABC's before ever attending school. This was a different era, a time when both parents did not have to work in order to support their families. My mother was a stay at home mom and spent a great amount of time reading to us and teaching us various different things. I have vivid memories of her making dots for me to trace and form the letters of the alphabet. I was around three when I first learned to write my name, and the way mom remembers the story is: "You wrote your name on everything and with anything that would write. You would even carve it in the ground with a stick or on various objects with whatever tool you could find."

"Ingenuity," I replied. Although I do not remember that part of beginning to learn to write. I also remember her reading to us all of the time.

My favorite books were all the ones by Dr. Seuss. Mom says I learned to read by the age of three. "You were mostly reading from memory," she said. "The Dr. Seuss books were full of rhymes and easy for you to recall. It wasn't long though and you began to make up your own stories from the pictures in books. Your stories were often more entertaining than the one that was written." By the age of four she said I could actually read the real words, and I began to reading books to my brothers and sisters. "You still liked to ad-lib from what was pictured."



We had shelves and shelves of books at home. There were many besides Dr. Seuss that I loved also. Where the "Wild Things Are," by Maurice Sendak. This one was one of my children's favorites also. When the movie came out we had to go and see it. It was wonderful and made us all cry. We also had a collection of "Clifford, The Big Red Dog," books and his various adventures that I really enjoyed. Below is a video of a book we used to have (someone in the family still does I am sure). We all inherited the children's stories that we had as a family. I was the first to have children and took all of the Dr. Seuss books to read to my girls along with a few of my other favorites.

Below you can view the story of "Little Black Sambo," by Helen Bannerman. It is about Southern Indian boy named Sambo and his encounter with tigers. This book has a very controversial history in the United States. All I can say is, "As a child I enjoyed it

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Kindergarten: Someone once said that "You learn all you need to know about life in Kindergarten." You learn not to spit, and not to hit; to color inside the lines, how to cut and paste, and not to run with scissors. The day also consisted of learning the alphabet, and how to write them, the numbers 1-10 and the names of colors. Luckily kindergarten was only a half day when I was in school, because my mother had already taught me all of these things. I don't remember learning anything in kindergarten that I didn't already know, but I loved going to school. It was a social experience and I made many new friends. What I remember most about it is recess, snack and nap time. Yes, in this half a day we went outside for thirty minutes. After recess we would have a box of milk and some sort of sweet treat. We then had to lie down on our rugs a take a nap, really? We didn't have to sleep, but we were expected to be still and quiet. I dreaded that part of the day. Those 20-30 minutes seemed to be an eternity to me. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Wilbur, was an older women. She was very kind and soft spoken. At the end of each day we would gather in a circle on the floor with our rugs, and she read us a story. My first writing began around this age my mother had me write "thank you" notes for birthday and Christmas gifts. I also began writing her notes on pictures that I drew and writing to my brothers and sisters.


 * First and Second Grade: **

In first grade we began to write the alphabet in both capital letters and lower case. We had lined pap e r with bold one inch lines and dashed lines in-between. The capital letters were formed in the one-inch lines and the lower-case letters were to be formed inside the half-inch space. I was very good at this as I had been writing for a couple of years by this time. I remember helping other students in my class who had difficulty with making the shapes and keeping them in the lines.

We also began to learn to read and read aloud in class. The books began very basic and I was reading well beyond the first grade level Within the first few weeks of class my teacher, Mrs. Miller, realized and contacted my mother about moving me into the second grade. In those days moving a child ahead in school was unheard of. My mother was concerned because I was already the youngest child in my first grade class. She worried about how this affect me in the long run, graduating from school at sixteen instead of seventeen. For various reasons my mother decided to keep me with my own age group and my teacher then suggested that I become her helper.

This was my first experience with ability grouping/tracking in schools. Mrs. Miller separated the class into two groups. When reading time came about, I led the group with that had a higher reading ability. This reading was boring and seemed so simple for me, but giving me this responsibility to teach others to read was challenging and fun. To this day I remember words such as "that", "what," and "which" that were harder for students to read and memorize. Here are the readers that we read:



These stories were about Sally, Dick and Jane. They also had a dog named Spot and they progressed from "Fun With Dick and Jane" to "Our New Friends," which added other characters such as John, Judy and Jean. They visited grandma and grandpa on the farm and other animals and pets were explored.

Second grade was much the same as the first:

<span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">We continued reading "Dick and Jane," read aloud in class and met more of their friends and neighbors. We practiced our writing, had lists of spelling words that we wrote several times and were tested on at the end of the week. <span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">I remember getting in trouble for writing my spelling words in cursive. This was not taught in school yet and was not the proper way for a second grader to write! <span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">I think that it was the summer between first and second grade that I began to write like my mom. I would trace her hand writing and she began to help me with writing in cursive. <span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">I also remember hating to write in school with the fat pencils. <span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">At home I used pens to write. By this time I was writing letters to my grandparents, who went to Florida every winter, in cursive.

<span style="color: #404040; display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%; text-align: left;">It second grade when I joined the Brownie Scouts. Our leader, Beth Page, had us pick a country to study and write a report on. I choose Germany, learned that it's capital was Hamburg, which was formally a state the German Confederation. Beth then put us in contact with other girl scouts from the list of countries that we had to choose from and we became pen pals. I wrote a girl from Hamburg, Germany for a couple of years. I don't remember her name, but I do remember our lives were very different. She lived in the city and I was from rural Charlotte, MI and lived on a farm.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 200%;">Third, Fourth, and Fifth:

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> These were the years that my schooling finally had caught up to me; I was actually learning something, although I don't remember writing much. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> English was much the same, spelling words to memorize and be tested on at the end of the week. I believe this is when began to write our own sentences using those words. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> The "spelling bee" was introduced. This was fun for me--because I was a great speller! I often won this competition only to be beat a few times by Ronnie Wadell (he was also a very good speller).

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> Finally, cursive handwriting was introduced and we were given regular sized pencils to write with! <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> By this time my penmanship was very good, I had mastered the cursive thing long before it was introduced in school. My teacher, Mrs. Powell, entered me in a National Writing Contest, and I won an award. I don't know what it was that I wrote--maybe I had to copy something, but I do remember the award. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;"> Mrs. Powell also read to us everyday. I remember her reading us "Charlotte's Webb," and "Stuart Little," by E.B. White.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">Reflecting on the use of the "spelling bee" in school: This must have been horrible for those my peers who were not good spellers. What a horrible thing to do in a classroom! I can only imagine what this must have been like for kids who were shy or weren't quick at spelling.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">My fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Heisler. I remember everyone dreading having her as a teacher. Kids hated her. I got along well because I was a good student. This is the grade that grammar was introduced. We began the diagramming of sentences and learned that every sentence must have a subject, a predicate, and a verb. Mrs. Heisler was an English Nazi; she held up to her reputation of being a tough teacher. She drilled the proper use of present and past tense in a sentence. She drilled everything about grammar period. She would take pictures of bad grammar and misspelled words on signs and bring them in to class. There are of couple of guys on television (don't know the name of the show) that travel around and correct grammar on signs. These guys made me laugh and remember Mrs. Heisler.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">She was also a stickler about penmanship and I remember her berating the left-handers in class over the proper slant in their writing. "It must slant to the right," she would say, as she handed papers back and made those students try again. I won a second National Penmanship award in fourth grade.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">Poetry was introduced to us by Mrs. Heisler. She read us Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "[|The Village Blacksmith]," and made us memorize and recite it in front of the class. This was stressful for me and I can only imagine how hard this was for many. This poem is forty-eight lines long and I still to this day do not understand the point of this exercise. What was she thinking? Was this to introduce us to public speaking? If the introduction public speaking was her thought it seems to me there several better ways to go about this. I still to this day remember the first stanza.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Sweeney, was young and vibrant. Everyone loved Mrs. Sweeney. This was the year I remember writing my first book report. I believe we were given a choice of a few different books to read and I chose "The Outsiders," by S.E. Hinton. This writing was something that we had to work on during our own time. We did not write a first draft or do any sort of editing. It was about read the book and summarize. I don't remember writing my report, but I loved the book, and do remember getting an "A" on my paper.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 160%;">Writing in school during these years was always done with pencil, but I remember Mrs. Sweeney handing me a pen. My handwriting with a pencil was so light that she could not read it, probably because I used a pen to write at home. I kept a diary back then. I used to write a lot in it; silly things about my day, my dreams, nightmares and such.