Grade Six Lessons

I spent a large part of my weekend with my camera in my hand.  I was playing around with black and white images which was something that I had wanted to do for awhile with my new camera.

One of the images I took, was of a couple of books on the bookshelf in my living room.

 There is something about a shelf full of books that pleases me somehow.  I love photos of it, and recently I even saw a quilt that was a shelf of books... but I am getting off topic.  I will get back to that one in another post!

Two of the books that I photographed were my grade six textbooks if indeed they were called that back then.  I haven't looked at them in years - in fact I forgot that I even had them. One was a Grade 6 Speller, and the other was a Grade 6 Arithmetic book... tells you something about the age of those books, doesn't it - who says arithmetic anymore?

I opened the Grade 6 Speller... and the first couple of pages had me spell-bound (no pun intended) in seconds.  Here are the general instructions at the beginning of the spelling book....

I was 11 yrs old when I was in grade 6 and believe it or not, Grade 6 year was  very memorable for me for several reasons.

The first is that is was 1967 - Canada's Centennial Year!  I remember that well because all the grade 6 classes in all the schools in Manitoba chose girls to dance in a huge celebration for Canada's 100th Birthday at the Winnipeg Arena that year.  I was chosen as one of the dancers in my school.  There was a specific dance routine we had to learn, and in fact every other dancer across the Province was learning the same routine.  We would be dancing for the Queen who was to be in attendance at the Celebration.  When we all gathered at the Arena for the dress rehearsal, I was overwhelmed in a way I had never been before in my young life.  It was an event I will never ever forget!

Another reason that Grade 6 was so memorable, was that myself and most of my friends were fixated on training bras.  It was the year they appeared one by one below the thin white cotton blouses of many young girls.  Some appeared for the right reason, others just because not to have one meant you did not fit in.

And it was the last year of grade school.  It was the last year to be a child before we all had to become pre-teens and enter junior high school - the big scary step towards adulthood.

My, that was so long ago... and all these memories jumped to the front of the stack from one little Spelling book.