Lesson 2
The Beginners Age, Three to Six
5. General Characteristics
(1) Absorption. The Beginners period, together with the Primary, Junior, and Intermediate periods, is pre-eminently the absorptive time of life. As the possibilities of the soul begin to awaken, curiosity, imitation, imagination, feeling and all the manifold expressions of its power, they require food and exercise just as the body requires them to develop strength. Hence these years of most rapid development are the years of greatest hunger, physical and mental, of greatest capacity to receive and assimilate, and of greatest activity.
(2) Rounded development. These periods are also the years of rounded development. Every part of the body is growing and every power of the soul. While development is not perfectly symmetrical and balanced, as for example, feeling developing strength before reason, imagination before self-control, it is nevertheless all-sided and requires in consequence nourishment and activity in every part.
Conditions change as maturity approaches and development becomes more and more narrowed to a special line. The muscles of the blacksmith's arm increase in strength, the fingers of the violinist grow more flexible, the imagination of the poet more beautiful, the analytic power of the lawyer more keen, until physical and mental power begin to break; but, outside of the specialty, growth and development practically cease because of the cessation of nourishment and activity on other sides.
6. Special Characteristics
(1) Restlessness. This is the most restless period of all the Sunday-school life. A surplus of activity is generated in the body, and it must be expended if the child is to be in a healthy condition, as well as in a normal, happy mental state.
But the outgo of this activity should do more than merely reduce pressure, as the escape of steam from a safety valve. It is a law of life that we both understand and retain most thoroughly the thing we do. This abounding activity is God's great provision for enabling the child to make his own that which he is receiving through his senses. It is handling and eating the apple that makes him understand what it is. It is playing that he is the father or the Sunday-school teacher, performing the act of helpfulness and love that enables him to enter into the meaning of these relations and duties of life.
The problem of the Sunday-school teacher then is not "How can I keep the child still," but "How can I make this activity teach the child;" for, re-emphasizing the thought, "The child understands and remembers the action far better than the admonition."