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February 16, 2014

Sharing Memories Week 7: Do You Remember Grades 3 and 4?

Sharing Memories Week 7: Do You Remember Grades 3 and 4?
Sharing Memories is a series of weekly prompts to help all genealogists (including me!) with writing up memories of our ancestors and our childhood. 

We all love to find a diary or letters written by great grandma or grandpa where they talk about their lives and share their memories. Think how excited one of your descendants will be to read about your memories and your stories! These stories will be lost after a few generations unless we preserve them. And what better way than in a weekly themed post. 

At the end of the year you will have 52 stories written about your childhood, your parents, grandparents and who knows what else.

If you write your own blog please use the hashtag #52SharingMemories if you are posting on Twitter or Google+  You can also  post your stories as comments on this blog post or in a private journal. It's your choice! The important thing is to write those memories down now! 

Week 7 of Sharing Memories takes us back to school. We are in Grades 3 and 4 - what do you remember best about those years? Do you have any report cards from those grades? Who was your best friend? Who was your teacher? What was your classroom like? How big was your school and how far from home? Did you walk or bus to school?

I was 8 years old when I started Grade 3 but turned 9 in November of that year. I remember I had my first male teacher that year but I forget his name. He was terrific and one of the most fun things was that we got to learn Square Dancing! I loved it even though I was the tallest girl in the class so I felt stupid with a pipsqueak boy at my side. 

My best friend showed up on the scene that year. She had been a year behind me so I didn't know her but then she was put in my class and we bonded instantly. Her name was Janie Armstrong and we remained best friends until her death last year. That was 50+ years of friendship. 

Grade 4 is mostly a blur. That might have been when my sister insisted I come with her over the frozen creek in the winter. She had to walk me to school and it was quite a long cold walk during January and February. Out of curiousity I looked it up on Google Maps and it appears it is only an 8 minute walk! It seemed quite a bit longer than that as a kid.

We kids were forbidden by parents and teachers to use the shortcut - the iced over creek. They said it was too dangerous but of course a lot of us did it anyway! My sister never did but one day we were going to be late so she grabbed my wrist and started across. Of course being the klutz that I was I slipped and fell. 

A huge goose egg started up on my forehead and I cried all the way to school. My poor sister knew she was going to get caught and she urged me to not tell any adults that we were on the creek ice when I fell. But of course I did. The school called my mom and sent me home. I don't remember any sympathy from my mother, she was pretty ticked that she had to leave work to stay home with me! 

The photo with this post is me at age 10 with my family at Christmas. I'm the one holding the doll. I don't have any school photos to share. 

 

4 comments:

Howland Davis said...

If you had a post on 2nd grade, I am sorry but I missed it. My memory of 2nd grade is that I missed the first weeks because I was in a hospital (and at home in bed) with a light case of polio. I had no real residual effects.

Olive Tree Genealogy said...

Howland - you can jump in at any time, no problem! Pick and choose the prompts that appeal to you, also no problem.

The full list of prompts is at http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.ca/p/sharing-memories.html

Glad you are here now, but wow what a scare that must have been for your parents when you had polio!

Unknown said...

I remember the 3rd grade mostly because I spent 3 years there. I finished my first year and we moved to a different distric so they kept me back. After that year wich didn't go well we moved back to the old district and they put me back in the erd grade. I was to young to protest. I was a dreamer and May have been ADD before they knew what that was. They said that I was just lazy.

linda lemons said...

http://lindajlemons.blogspot.com/2014/02/sharing-memories.html