The children sat five or six at a long wooden bench. Reading, spelling, poetry, copy books, home exercises and mapping were very important along with tables and mathematics. The older children learnt Latin and Greek roots and were drilled in formal analysis of sentences and formal parsing of words. Sewing was taught regularly to the girls. Mrs Ridgway attended to this for a long time until a second teacher was appointed.

Children of all grades wrote on slates with slate pencils. The work could be wiped off the slate with a moist rag kept in a small jar or bottle next to each ink well.

Children in upper grades performed a great deal of their work in ink, writing with split nib pens. Usually the ink was watered down to last and in the majority of cases, the nibs were very scratchy and difficult to get used to.

Mapping had to be done freehand, no tracing allowed. The older children became expert at drawing Australia and England but dreaded Scotland. Of course, dozens of place names had to be put in accurately from memory.

At play time, children of all ages played together with the older boys and girls taking care of the younger ones at all times. Tunnel ball and overhead ball were popular as was rounders played with a stick and old tennis ball. There was no organised inter-school sport for many years and little money spent on equipment. The girls liked to bounce balls off the beams under the building, reciting little rhymes as they played. Marbles and knucklebones were popular boys' games. There were even occasions when horses ridden to school provided rides in the lunch hour. (As late as 1965, children rode horses to school, leaving them hitched to the front fence. Sometimes, one would escape and eat the children's lunches and Mr Ridgway's prized flowers.)

Monthly dances were held to raise money and those who did not dance would play Euchre (a card game) under the school, but the dust and grit would always be a problem with the cards as it shook out of the cracks of the floor from the folk dancing above.

There was no electricity. One of the boys boiled a kettle on a Primus stove. One day, it exploded. A boy was sent to get a chaff bag to smother the flames, but he came back with a school bag so Mr Ridgway then tore the curtains from the cupboard.