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What was your first day at school like?
My granddaughter, Maria, starts school today.
Do you remember your first day at school? I remember mine as at the end of the day I thought my mum had forgotten to collect me ( she had got the home time wrong it was 3pm, she thought it was 3.30!) Thinking she had forgotten me I walked out the gate , crossed the road then along another road, crossed another road and another and then crossed the busy A23, all on my own. I remember that walk so clearly ,I was lucky that nothing happened to me. Mum was cross, but more relieved that I got home safely.
Comments
Yes I can remember the first pre school I went to, (not baby and toddlers) what I wore and some of the things I did
I can remember my first primary school day in a village school
I can remember when I moved to a town in a different area and joined an already established class of seven year olds :)
Can't remember first day at secondary school, thankfully all that is just a blur
When we moved house I settled in fine but I drip drop my lunch all over the floor. Then I used my nose as a brake and was sent home which was a shame because I wanted to stay and play! I'm still friends with the people who played with me that day.
I was thrown out of school dinners at the age of 9 for refusing to eat what was put on my plate. They made me take the dinner back to class, and I still didn't eat it. So eventually I had to go walk across town and catch a bus on my own every lunchtime, and be back for class afterwards. What larks (not what I thought at the time).
ST Force that is so sad. Your mum must have found that hard too.
BB that sounds awful. I was made to eat my beetroot once, age 6, the head took me in her office and said 'eat it up,' as I had left it on my plate, but I didn't eat it.
I love beetroot now.
First day at secondary school was memorable in that the kitchens weren't up and running, so we had lunch - cottage pie - shipped in from somewhere or other. Guess who discovered the maggots?
All teachers great and small."
(I was only little and it seemed logical.)
I remember wetting myself in science once, 'cos my friend made me laff so much :)
I felt sorry for the next class in that room, but not for long.
Come on everybody; get writing.
Class One was to the right and I was taken inside and left with the teacher and other children.
There were boys in the kindergarten classes, but they had to leave at the age of 7. Nuns couldn't cope with them after that
Worst school memory: being dropped off by Dad at the usual rear entrance, which was up a very steep slope. It had been snowing and the whole slope was sheet ice, and I tried and tried to climb it but couldn't. I got half way, to a leaky downpipe, and clung there for a while, but couldn't get any further. I remember sobbing my little heart out with fear and impossibility, and finally having to work my way round to the front of school, all the way round the block.
Must be 50 years ago = but I'm not old enough for that (not inside my head, anyway).
I remember my first day at school. I was five years and two months. I hadn't been to pre-school or nursery. There wasn't one. Just straight from being at home with mum. I was terrified and hated it. I refused to put my PE bag on the peg in the cloakroom and carried it around all day. I guess it was a kind of comfort thing.
Thanks, yes she loved it, walked in with confidence her mum said.
Her dad wasn't so keen on his first day, like you, and refused to take off his clothes to change for PE. I had to go up to the school because he was crying.
My daughter started school with no problems.
There were kids there in floods of tears which I thought hilarious. Moral is. don't molly coddle your kids.
- when we out into the playground at 'milk play' (remember that??!) I immediately ran to the Junior playground to find my sister. She was mortified and ordered me back to the 'Baby' playground
- at dinner time I didn't know that I was supposed to have my school dinner at school, so I went home. (No big roads, but quite a long walk.) My mother was horrified. When she returned me, apparently my equally horrified teacher said "I would have had kittens if I'd known".
The fact is - in days of yore - a five year old walking around alone was relatively safe - wish it was still like that.
My first real school day, all I can recall really is walking down the outside with my mum - i was scared but also excited, and i didn't cry although lots of others did. Other things I can remember about that year (we went to another school soon after) is in the big school hall there were large trucks and wheeled toys you could ride on - but I never got a ride as I was too shy to ask, had no friends and didn't really understand how to make friends. I can remember being bullied and standing on the edges of the playground gazing at the big, blue doors and longing to be able to go back into the safety of inside. Standing as close as possible to teachers (not near that they'd notice me, I was too shy for that). I can recall being taken outside the classroom, the teacher sitting on a chair and testing me on reading, and her being surprised at how far I got on the lists and putting me up to a higher group. And I can remember having to go through little lists of maths questions on bookmark sized paper, thy were at the front of the classroom, you went and picked one up, took it back and did the sums and then went and got another. I spent my time getting another as I couldn't answer ANY of the questions!
'I have, miss'
' then tell me what it's about'
I recited it practically word for word - she never challenged me again! I left that school after two years as we moved to the other side of town/ Don' t remember the first day at next school.
"gasp" how uncanny, we could be twins, Carol, for I too have a mental image.
Hmm, think I must disagree with that comment Liz
Then after one school dinner I told my Mum we'd eaten grass. That turned out to be cress.
Book B, are you new, have you introduced yourself -Welcome writers thread?
One boy loved it and always asked for 'spares' - the ones left over when people were away from school.
I was also in hospital aged 6, as I was always ill (every few weeks) with tonsils, earache etc, so they took out my tonsils and adenoids. I can remember my mum prepared me very well and I wasn't scared at all - the girl in the next bed cried all the time, my mum thinks because her mum just left her without any explanation and rushed out (looking back, she was probably scared and upset herself, but it didn't help her daughter). However she could only visit once a day with my brother who was 4 as the hospital was several bus rides from our home.
I can remember several things - they had toys up one end of the ward on shelves, one of which was a big white teddy. I asked if I could cuddle the teddy and was told he could sit on the end of my bed for a few minutes, but he was just for looking at or he'd get dirty!
I can remember after the op having a sore throat and being given lovely, cool ice-cream. The girl in the next bed was screaming as usual and i could see her bright. red throat and realised mine must look the same.
And I can remember being taken to the ante-room of the operating theatre, or it may have been the theatre except it was very small even to me, and being given a sort of hose to put in my mouth that tasted of mint and being asked to count backwards. Recalling now, I wonder if children of 6 would be asked to do that and whether they could?
And I can remember being given little gifts by my mum every time she came, and when she came to get me she took me to a toy shop and I came away with two bright yellow balls and some crayons.
That reminds me of the little boy from Cyder with Rosy. My first school was at Urqhart up in Scotland. I thinked I enjoyed my first day although sums somewhat stumped me. Before I started school, Dad tried to introduce me to numbers and arithmetic with dots so when I was faced with actual numbers, it was a bit alien to me. I picked up the art of reading pretty quickly. At the end of my first term however, I developed measles, the full blown variety so because it was not that long ago since I first had my left eye operated on at Aberdeen Sick Children's hospital as I developed a severe squint, all the curtains in my room were drawn. When I had the eye operated on before I started school, I had the emotionally painful experience of being without my mother except for visiting times which were very brief. Worse still, both of my eyes were sheathed in bandages so I could not see her. All the time, she told me it was for my own good and I was also tied to the bed. Apparently when I arrived home eventually before Christmas, I hardly spoke because I was so traumatised so I reckon attending school was delayed for a short while until I had recovered from the worst. In those awful days during the late fifties, mothers could not stay with their children while they had operations - it was deemed as spoiling them and had to be toughened up.
Some traumas stay with you forever.
and Awww Woll
just awful :(
(((Woll))) ((( Carol )))
Sadly, this set the pattern of bullying for the next 11yrs, through two schools - couldn't fight back, there were just too many of them... and I was actually just as scared of my Dad's reaction to my "failure" to stand up to them...
That particular nasty little oik eventually suffered for his psycho-kid stages - he ended up as a psychotic alcoholic drug-head, in & out of prison - and I heard he'd pickled himself into an early box, thankfully...
...So watch out for that novel of revenge against the school bullies & gangs, on the roll now & not far from MS completion! Ah, maybe success from his failure!?!? I hope so...