31 Days, 31 Memories - Day 28

[bironic]

Whew. I’m all written out today, and owe a bunch of you responses. A short one tonight.

28. Pre-School

I don't know what was wrong with our teachers, or the curriculum (if such a thing existed for pre-schools), but we had this song that taught us how to draw a rainbow, and the colors were out of order. It went: "Red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple too." And that's how we were expected to reproduce it with crayons and finger paint.

Comments

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

In that particular order? Because that's just wrong... The spectrum doesn't go like that. *is baffled*


In first grad I was taught that in order to properly cut (with scissors) something out of a piece of paper, you have to follow the lines and cut it all in one go. (Meaning that you were not to break the edge of the paper more than once. I can't seem to explain this properly.)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember something like that too! -- as if we were incompetent to keep snipping off pieces of paper as we went around the circle. Maybe it was meant to make us concentrate and therefore stay quiet, or teach us precision, like coloring inside the lines.

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Strange... My first grade was an American school, so I wonder if it might be standard for that school system. I was never told anything of the like in Danish school in the years after and it made me wonder. I stuck to that method for years, though *G*
The idea that it teaches precision is the best theory I've heard yet; it at least makes some sense of the idea.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

It would be nice to think that silly instructions like that had a purpose, wouldn't it?

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really would. I think I will pretend that you had the right reason there.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

Sheesh. What if Einstein had decided that E=MC cubed made a better rhyme for the poem he was writing? :)

When I was six or seven, my best friend had asthma, and the hospital gave her a kit after she had to have a brief stay there. It had an inhaler, medication, booklets, and a black balloon, which turned out to be solely for demonstration. "This is how my wheeze goes," she sing-songed to me, blowing it up as they'd taught her and then letting the air out bit by bit, so that the balloon gave out a pitiful groan.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

You know how psychologists say smells are linked very strongly with memory? Music must be, too. I mean, I know it's incredibly useful for learning, hence the alphabet song and those teachers who tried to make up tunes to get you to remember equations and categories and things, but hearing a song or even a sing-song melody like your friend's can bring you instantly back to something years earlier, even if you'd forgotten it till then.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

What always gets me is when I remember the tune, but forget half the words and have no hope of recalling whatever it was a mneumonic (?) device FOR. For the longest time I could sing almost all of a pre-school song about baby animals, entitled, "What Is a Baby Turkey Called?" I would get to the last line, and belt out, "But what is a baby turkey called? A baby turkey is called a..."

That's right. I'd completely forgotten the last word.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

How frustrating! I don't suppose the lyrics would be online somewhere... But yes, remembering a melody without the words is right up there with recognizing a face but not knowing why you know the person -- only you can figure out the answer, so if you can't, that's it.