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Three R's

When our Grandfathers and Grandmothers were at school they used to say that they began by learning the three R's; this was a sort of old fashioned joke, for the three R's  were meant to stand for Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, and they certainly all begin with a strong R sound, but our Grandparents hadn't learned much about writing if they thought it was spelt with an R, and they seem to have lost sight of the A in arithmetic!

But that famous phrase - the Tree R's - is a useful reminder that education starts with learning to read, to write and to work with figures. You sart by getting to know the shapes of the letters - by reading them; then you learn to made these shapes yourself - that is writing.
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  1. Jim Sheng31 October 2010 at 08:24

    Newer versions of the three Rs include Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - which is a popular theme in environmentalism (alternatively, there is a fourth "R" in environmentalism, which is Repair) - and Read, Write, Recite.

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