Family affair: Ross Emerton with his granddaughter Bella O'Brien, 5, at Tarrawanna Public School. Picture: ROBERT PEET
When Ross Emerton started school at Tarrawanna Public School in 1952, he ate tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch, wrote with a pen and ink in a class of 48 children. He absolutely hated drinking warm milk out of cartons which sat outside his classroom for hours, baking in the hot sun.
Teachers were strict, marbles was the most popular schoolyard game and the cane was used to punish naughty children.
Sixty years later, Mr Emerton's five-year-old granddaughter Bella O'Brien's experience of kindergarten at Tarrawanna Public couldn't be more different, but the two celebrated a bond on Saturday for the school's 60th anniversary.
They joined hundreds of past and present teachers and students who gathered to share stories and catch up with old friends for the occasion.
"It's brilliant to have Bella come here, and my daughter - her mum - came here too so its a really nice sense of occasion," Mr Emerson said.
Bella's kindergarten teacher Kylie Pratt said today's kindergarten lessons were very different to those Mr Emerton would have attended.
"I guess the kindergarten classroom has changed a lot, mostly due to technology," Ms Pratt said.
"Most of Bella's learning comes through on computers and the interactive whiteboard but the basics are the same - we're still learning to read and write and do our number work but the way we learn is different.
"We have lots of extra curricular activites, excursions and different subjects - and there is a focus on healthy food and PE classes, so definitely no tomato sauce sandwiches."
