EDS4
One area in a corner of the room was always clear of desks. Only a tall easel was in the space and on it, a huge book. It was taller than some of the kids in the class, and wider too. The book had a dark red bumpy hard cover. Inside the book was knowledge! Stories of Dick and Jane that we would learn to read. With thirty-one kids in the class, not all could be in the area at the same time and it couldn’t be read by the whole class. The teacher would have five or six kids pull their chairs to the area at a time to learn and practice. The rest of the class would practice printing the alphabet or draw pictures. Mrs. Byron would open the book and the journey to knowledge would begin.
There were tools to learn to use in your journey; The big round pencil about the size of a Lincoln log, with the big lead, filled your hand and forced you to print big letters with the letters getting bigger as the point wore down on the coarse light tan paper with solid red lines and red dash lines in between to show the size of the lower case letters; big crayons, flat on one side so they wouldn’t roll, in your choice of colors, red, blue, yellow, green, brown, black, and white; and a twelve inch wooden ruler that showed inches, half inches, and quarter inches.
I learned what recess was. I had never needed recess before. Apparently, I had been on recess for most of my young life. Recess was play time! And it introduced me to a new toy, a really big red rubber ball. About half bigger than a basketball, it could be soft or hard depending on how much air was in it, but never as hard as a basketball. It was used to play kickball and dodge ball. A smaller version was used to play catch and hand ball(I guess that’s what they called it.) a version of kick ball. There were big thick ropes. So thick that a first grader had a hard time getting their hands around it. The girls used it for jumping rope. The boys used it for tugs-of-war. There were races. Red Rover was big in our class.
There were tools to learn to use in your journey; The big round pencil about the size of a Lincoln log, with the big lead, filled your hand and forced you to print big letters with the letters getting bigger as the point wore down on the coarse light tan paper with solid red lines and red dash lines in between to show the size of the lower case letters; big crayons, flat on one side so they wouldn’t roll, in your choice of colors, red, blue, yellow, green, brown, black, and white; and a twelve inch wooden ruler that showed inches, half inches, and quarter inches.
I learned what recess was. I had never needed recess before. Apparently, I had been on recess for most of my young life. Recess was play time! And it introduced me to a new toy, a really big red rubber ball. About half bigger than a basketball, it could be soft or hard depending on how much air was in it, but never as hard as a basketball. It was used to play kickball and dodge ball. A smaller version was used to play catch and hand ball(I guess that’s what they called it.) a version of kick ball. There were big thick ropes. So thick that a first grader had a hard time getting their hands around it. The girls used it for jumping rope. The boys used it for tugs-of-war. There were races. Red Rover was big in our class.
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Oh, the memories come flooding back. :-)