Third grade was the best year of all for me. I had an excellent young teacher who inspired me to want to be a teacher. I can remember almost everything I learned that year. Most of it was hands-on learning. We learned to card real wool, spin it into thread/yarn, and to weave it. We ground corn into corn meal. We learned Indian dances, and how to make and play the "tom-toms." We had a news program using a microphone by which we learned of current events. We had a "science room" where we could go to care for and observe the growth of plants and some small animals. We learned cursive handwriting and the multiplication tables.
I learned many years later that my grade had been the pilot program or perhaps the guinea pigs for experiments in education. There must have been some wisdom in the concepts because I still remember so much. I also learned many years later that because of God's wisdom, the brain takes a growth spurt at age seven, and that what is learned at ages eight to nine, before the surge of the hormones of puberty, will be retained in the memory for a lifetime.
I also think that the hands-on approach was perfect for me. It meant I could enjoy learning without the struggle of reading. (I had an unknown vision problem until the summer before my senior year of high school.) I have always had an innate desire to find out about everything. My third grade year gave me the most satisfaction of that need.
In today's world the homeschool movement has the freedom to make use of this kind of learning more effectively than most school situations. Perhaps that is one of the reasons most homeschooled children are more advanced than their public school peers.
1 comment:
That makes me think a lot of fourth grade. I had much the same experience and outcome. That was the year Mrs. Craig was my teacher. I was shocked years later to find out that you were particularly opposed to some of the content learned from her. Her fun effectiveness sure made me oblivious to any content flaws.
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