Anyone remember first day of school?

Camper6

Well-known Member
Wow! That was a real long time ago but I can remember it like it was yesterday.

I was terrified. I remember the blackboard and a sort of curtain scroll that pulled down and I'm sure it was the vowels displayed. Anyway it was all greek to me. We didn't have kindergarten. We started in grade one and it was a full day except we were allowed a 15 minute break called recess in the morning and afternoon. We were also allowed an hour and a half to go home for lunch. I didn't want to go back. And our teachers were nuns which to me were strange.

But the most strange remembrance and it was the smell of the classroom. There used to be a kind of clay stuff that you could mold into shape. Like playdough. It was called plasticene (sp). Even now if I can smell something like it my heart starts racing just like the smell in a dentist's office. It's funny about smells. It stays with you for life. You just don't forget a smell. It's indelibly inserted into your brain. My mother taught me how to identify the good mushrooms by the smell. I can still identify the good ones easily when picking wild mushrooms.

My panic disappeared when we started to learn how to read. I was really good at it. And they used to take me to the next grade to read to the class.

So share your experiences with me so that I don't think I was such a wimp.
 

Vividly. I carried on like a maniac, screaming and clinging to my mother, that they sent me home with her. This went on for a couple of days.
Thanks for that. I remember pretending I was sick so that I wouldn't have to go. My mother said, o.k., then you will have to go to bed and stay there. That cured me.
 

Yeah. My mom brought me to school at 8 AM. I guess my parents made school sound like fun, so I went willingly. When lunch came, I walked back home. I was six, and walking all by myself. Nobody thought that was unusual back in 1952. I ate, and left to walk back to school. Well, I decided to play along the way, and I got to school after the bell had rung Everyone was in class. I couldn't remember which classroom was mine. I walked all over the school, nothing looked familiar, so I went home. When I got home, my mom wanted to know why I was back so early. I told her they closed the school. She said "OK". Yup, I was "Absent" on my first day of school.
 
I hadn't even thought of being taken to the next grade classroom to read til you mentioned it- yes; but not on the first day.

Kindergarten was our first experience with a structured environment. Before then, we kids were at home. My "gripe" to this day was the birthday deadline- it meant some of us started school at 4 years old. I recall a classmate who was a few months younger than I; he was so scared that he didn't even want his picture taken.
For some of us, it was even our first experience with children our own age.

Kindergarten was full-day. For the first day, though, parents had the option of taking their children home at lunchtime. As my parents were the only ones who showed up for this, I was so embarrassed that I hid under the table. The teacher didn't like this, so she took my ice cream away.
Other than that, it was uneventful. I went to school on the school bus and returned on it after school. My father had the day off, and took "home movies" of me jumping off the bus .

A few of us were so advanced that we didn't belong in Kindergarten, but the school had a policy of not promoting kids for that reason. It occurred to me kids in that category had much-older siblings who "contributed" to our early learning.
 
My first day of school, Grade 1, I was 5 yrs. old. First time with a group of children my age. Not having been socialized, I was very lost - refused to join the circle on the floor at story time. I did better with learning how to print, and reading. All in all, not a pleasant time for me. I was an extremely shy child, and a loner despite having 2 older sisters.
 
I loved it! I was the youngest kid on our block & the kids I played with were already there,so I could hardly wait to join them. I had new clothes & shoes & was just smiling ear to ear, & couldn’t figure out why some kids were pouting or crying and P-ing on themselves.
 
Mine was okay. Parents, teachers and kids all met up in the gym and kids weren't discouraged from playing, laughing. So when teachers started dividing us up to go to the different classrooms, it felt like a game. My first grade teacher was a kind, grandmotherly person so that helped.
 
I had to walk a mile to school (but it was OK, it was downhill both ways...) and cross a major highway. When winter came, it was pitch dark and snowy. I had a flashlight and boots and enough clothes on for three kids; it wasn't considered child abuse for your young child to walk to school for a mile in the dark and the snow.

I was still 5 when I started first grade, but lucky for me first and second grade were only half days. There was no kindergarten available so it was all new to me. I wasn't sure that I liked this new way of life.

I was dyslexic. Apparently nobody at my school had ever heard of dyslexia; I just "wasn't trying hard enough". I had great teachers but really didn't like school until third grade when I finally learned to read.
 
I had to walk a mile to school (but it was OK, it was downhill both ways...) and cross a major highway. When winter came, it was pitch dark and snowy. I had a flashlight and boots and enough clothes on for three kids; it wasn't considered child abuse for your young child to walk to school for a mile in the dark and the snow.

I was still 5 when I started first grade, but lucky for me first and second grade were only half days. There was no kindergarten available so it was all new to me. I wasn't sure that I liked this new way of life.

I was dyslexic. Apparently nobody at my school had ever heard of dyslexia; I just "wasn't trying hard enough". I had great teachers but really didn't like school until third grade when I finally learned to read.
My son likes to bug me when I talk about the good old days and school.

He tells me. "Tell us the story again when you had to walk to school in the winter on the ice and uphill with barbed wire tied around your shoes". Get outta my yard son.
 
Nope, not scared, confessed immediately...
'Go to boys room, clean yourself...'

Yea, your right, don't remember a girl wetting herself, only boys.

Hillcrest Elementary School 1947
 
Not only do I remember the first day of school the Nun who taught me remembered it when I had to bring something in her classroom when I was in the 8th grade. I knocked on the door to her classroom and when I walked in she said "Get the Buckets". She remembered how much I cried when I was in her class. Of course there was a reason I cried. I didn't want to go to school and miss being with my brothers 2 little boys that lived with us at the time. I wanted to be home with them.
 
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My Primary School in Adelaide in the 50's was like this one....minus the air-cons of course
Lots of schools were like this to house the Baby Boomer kids
The schoolyard was mostly just dust but great place to play marbles
We would get the occasional 'willy-willy' like a small whirlwind dust storm in the schoolyard
I remember the first day I went to school and I was fine but by lunch time one of the boys was
so upset the teacher asked if anyone knew where he lived and I did so I took him home
He cried all the way back to his house but I felt very important indeed
I remember when it was very hot in Summer the bitumen on the roads would melt and stick to my shoes
The footpaths were just dirt but in Winter they were really sloshy so I wore galoshes
 
Yes I do I was 6 years cold when I started school ,the school is still standing but it’s been deserted for many years . I took this photo of the school this time last year when I passed through where I lived as a child on my way up to Queensland.
It was a single building with 3 class rooms

660AAD83-6BAF-421C-ADFD-D3D5705BB1E9.jpeg
 
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Don't remember the *very* first day but I always loved the first day of the school year... new pencils, erasers, shoes... My mom was big on finding a cigar box and covering it with contact paper (do they still make that??) for a pencil box. I loved school.
 


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