I remember my first course at college, my esteemed professor started out the lecture by saying, "Do you remember as a kid when you experimented with a water bucket and swung it around to see what happened?...... This is centrifugal force." Well, I had just spent four years at a rigorous college prep school getting ready for the academic rigor of attending an ivy league college. I had never swung a bucket around as a kid, yet all experiences may have an academic counterpart. 

All observations can lead to academic abstraction and rigor. To get 'ahead' at the expense of truly 'knowing' and understanding the sensate experience of the body and the connections to one's community and 'common sense' understanding may not be true education. 

Early education, early childhood experiences are "Head, Hands & Heart"

It starts with a 'glint in the eye', a spark of enthusiasm and it may lead to a lifetime of engagement in an academic area. 

And the 'bucket' children in our lives may well grow up 

to be Richard Branson or Elon Musk.