What were the different subjects that Helen learned during the first year of her education? Describe her learning process.

After Helen learns the words for things, having had Miss Sullivan spell them into her hand, Helen's teacher then uses squares of cardboard and punches the braille spelling of the word into one of the squares. Helen takes the cardboard squares and pins them to the object for which they stand. Naturally, she has trouble with abstract concepts since there is nothing to touch in those cases. One day, though, Helen strings beads in a...

After Helen learns the words for things, having had Miss Sullivan spell them into her hand, Helen's teacher then uses squares of cardboard and punches the braille spelling of the word into one of the squares. Helen takes the cardboard squares and pins them to the object for which they stand. Naturally, she has trouble with abstract concepts since there is nothing to touch in those cases. One day, though, Helen strings beads in a pattern of two of one kind, then three of another kind. When she makes an error in this pattern, Miss Sullivan corrects her, and Helen restrings the beads. Then as Helen tries to figure out if she is stringing the beads correctly, Miss Sullivan touches her forehead and spells out in Helen's hand the word "think." This abstract concept is the first that Helen learns.

Whenever Miss Sullivan talks with Helen, she spells into the girl's hand. When Helen responds, sometimes she does not know the right word or idiom that will convey her thoughts, so her teacher supplies her with the new words and urges her to continue in their conversation even if she cannot keep up her part of the dialogue. Helen writes in her autobiography that this process goes on for several years because, being deaf, she cannot hear the idiomatic expressions that are in constant use in even the simplest conversations and are picked up unconsciously by children who can hear. She explains to her readers,

The little hearing child learns these from constant repetition and imitation. The conversation he hears in his home stimulates his mind and suggests topics and calls forth the spontaneous expression of his own thoughts. This natural exchange of ideas is denied to the deaf child. My teacher, realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus I lacked (Chapter 7).

Repeating to Helen as much of what she hears as possible, Miss Sullivan even demonstrates how Helen can be part of the conversation by spelling out what she wants to say into her teacher's hand. But, Helen is reluctant to partake in conversations with others, and for a long time, she searches for words that are appropriate for the occasions in which she finds herself.

When Miss Sullivan takes Helen to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Helen is surprised to learn that all the children cannot see either. They spell out words in her hands just as her teacher has, and Helen is delighted. One day the students go to Bunker Hill, and Helen has her first history lesson. The following day she rides on a steamer to Plymouth and visits the area where the Pilgrims landed. Helen states that she acquires a little model of Plymouth Rock with the embossed numbers "1620" on it. She delights in holding this memento as "[I] turned over in my mind all that I knew about the wonderful story of the Pilgrims" (Chapter 9).