Holy Mesopotamia Batman: First Grade Common Core Social Studies vocabulary

[haele]

197. Being a daughter of history teachers and (at age 4-6)having gone to UC Berkley classes with parents,

I would be able to read the words, and if they were presented in context, perhaps pick each of them out in a "find the vocabulary word" in a sentence quiz but - remember, context is still everything at that age, even if the kid is a genius. At six or seven, the children are just emerging from a psychological "world revolves around me" worldview that is base on experiences (and play), and though they may seem to appreciate the liberal arts and the world around them, their learning outside personal experience is still pretty much rote, and the understanding that comes there are other lives outside them and (perhaps) their immediate family is still not that clear.
Remembering what I was doing at five, six, seven...if I couldn't "play" through my reading, it was difficult to comprehend what was going on. I remember I read the actual book Black Beauty at the age five, and a couple hours a day where I had to entertain myself as my parents worked and my baby brother was napping. I had a neighbor mom/sitter who had made hand drawn paper dolls and horses and a chalkboard on easel; I would read two or three chapters, then act out the story with the dolls and the chalkboard. I also colored in ten or so line drawings (and some of the words) that were in the book (I still have the book, and did I ever color it up!). While I wasn't protected "babied" like many five or six year olds, I wasn't expected to comprehend read at the same level as a high school senior or college student. I was still learning through experience and context presentation.

Flash forward forty years, and I can't tell you the frustrating hours working with my then-14-year-old stepdaughter to drag her through middle school vocabulary lists that look the same as this, because her education was based "activity books" and "teaching the test" - standardizing and qualifying education as a science - rather than through learning experiences - where both static (the ubiquitous activity book) and kinetic (films, creative in class projects, play-acting) lessons appropriate for individual levels of maturity are presented within the age range, and the teacher has to know their subject instead of just regurgitating a text book lesson plan. Heck, Sunday School does a better job at age-appropriate "Bible Study" than most schools do with any sort of education, and it's expected that most Sunday School teachers use that mix of static and kinetic to teach.

Something like teaching young children about Mesopotamia by building a ziggarut or modeling early irrigation, making clay tablets and play-acting an active scene from the life of the average inhabitant of that culture at the same time there's a reading lesson and vocabulary presentation, instead of just giving them an activity coloring book and letting them loose on it to rise or sink by their capability and parent's involvement.
That's not touchy-feely, that's getting the child to learn the hows and whys of civilization rather than passing a test through rote memorization, then forgetting the lesson once the tests are done.

So from personal experience, as to the list above, while I would have been able to understand these words at the age of six, this would still be extremely difficult list if I were expected to just read, then independently spell these vocabulary on a test at the age of six or seven rather than experience the lesson and learn the vocabulary through that experience. Especially since reading is not the same as spelling.

Haele