Since Pearl starts kindergarten next week, we've been thinking a lot about our early school experiences. What do you remember about kindergarten?
Absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Tracey | 20 August 2009 at 06:39 AM
I remember:
-walking to the school with my mother for the first day of school; our house was/is the 2nd house from the school's tennis courts
-my teacher, Mrs Murphy, a very nice lady
-a classroom full of toys: a house area with a kitchen and shelves; another area with shelves full of wooden blocks of all sizes; puzzles; books; and best of all was our very own CUBBY HOLE where we placed our "stuff" and the coat room with a label for our very own hook
-learning that boys and girls tended to behave in different ways, with the boys being active and exuberant and the girls being more quiet and reserved. As a tomboy I wanted to play with the boys! Once they wouldn't let me so I threw a wooden block at one of the boys because I was so mad.
-playing, exploring, art, music, circle time, enjoying being a kid (whereas contemporary kindergarten is what our 1st grade was; how sad is that for kids that childhood is compressed and kindergarten, instead of being a magical year of play is now an intense academic experience)
I would love to do kindergarten again!
Posted by: Lynda | 20 August 2009 at 07:18 AM
Kindergarten was 40 years ago this year. I remember:- A pair of twin boys, whose names were Clark and Craig or something like that. Cute with dark hair.
- A boy named Forest, like the forest green crayon
- The Weekly Reader newspaper, with (I think) a dog and a cat named Nip and Tuck. I always whizzed right through this and ended up coloring while the other kids finished spelling out the words.
- Chipping a bone in my hand in the inevitable result of leaning back too far with my hand behind the small wooden chair I was sitting in.
- Not being able to play on the monkey bars with a cast-thingy on my hand.
- Spotting Johnny Cash at the Rexall Drugs. (Okay, that wasn't kindergarten per se, but it was the same year.
Posted by: Anon | 20 August 2009 at 07:42 AM
I remember sitting in my "pod" (class room) looking across to another girl in the classroom across from ours (we had no doors) and making mean faces and gestures at her all day every day.
Oh and kissing my first boy.
Apparently I started out early w/ the misbehavior. LOL
Posted by: Tina-cious.com | 20 August 2009 at 08:36 AM
My teacher, Ms. Shephard (which I'm not sure I'm spelling right), was considered the cool teacher. Now that I look back, I realize she might have been a bit of a hippie. Yay! She played guitar and sometimes (I don't remember how often, once a week, maybe on Fridays?) the entire kindergarten would would go to the cafeteria/auditorium for some sort of assembly, and Ms. Shephard would sit up front on a stool or chair and play her guitar for us. Her class got to sit right up front, so we were the cool ones. Yay! Everyone wanted to be in the guitar-playing teacher's class. She rocked.
I also remember that at the end of the year some older kids came to our class for a week or so and helped us write a book. We would tell our stories and they would help us write them out, then everyone got a book with copies of everyone else's stories. Mine was about a Rubiks Cube. Yes, this was the early 80s. :-) My mom still has that book stored away somewhere.
Oh! And we had a circus at the end of the year. I think I was seal. I can't remember exactly, except I remember wearing my bathing suit and that I wanted to be a trapeze artist.
Posted by: valerie | 20 August 2009 at 09:25 AM
not too much really. it was 1967 in New Orleans, and my parents thought that they'd send me to the very recently desegregated New Orleans public school system. i'd spent 2 years in pre-school, so they very quickly saw that i was bored out of my mind. within 2 months, after apparently listening to me complain of not learning anything...i got tested for private schools...and deposited at St. Martin's Episcopal. oh..did i mention that pre-school had been at a Jewish pre-school? even in kinder...i knew that it was totally foreign to have to sit thru mass. that's pretty much my only memory of kinder...feeling odd sitting thru mass. :)
Posted by: Robyn | 20 August 2009 at 10:54 AM
We moved from New York to New Jersey in December of my kindergarten year, so I have vivid memories of coming into routines that were new to me and routine to everyone else; waiting with my mother for the school bus on the corner and being introduced there to the girl down the block who was to be my best friend for the next several years; being shown around the kindergarten classroom and feeling shy around all the other kids.
I remember the teacher asked me a question on that first day, I gave some monosyllabic answer, and she praised me and said I was already talking more than another girl (the teacher pointed her out) who hadn't said a word all year. Later I somehow became friends with that girl and went over to her house to play, where I discovered that at home she talked all the time; it was just at school that she was silent.
Posted by: elswhere | 20 August 2009 at 11:28 AM
I remember taking a picture outside the house just before catching the school bus with my sister. that was very important - the first picture of school years!
i remember not liking my teacher, actually she was the one who didn't like me...
i remember music class, a very relaxing/silly/interesting time of the day.
Posted by: marta | 21 August 2009 at 06:32 AM
1) I remember having to memorize a bible verse every week (private school).
2) I remember breaking my pencil lead during penmanship and being too afraid to ask to sharpen it so I used the broken piece to continue writing out my letters.
3) I remember after coloring a picture with a blue strip of sky across the top that the teacher pulled me aside and told me the sky is all around us and that I should have filled every empty space with blue. This devastated me and 25 years later I talked about it in counseling. It could be why I was afraid to ask to sharpen my pencil. :)
Posted by: Christa | 21 August 2009 at 04:07 PM
I remember crying on the first day and my mother passing me a hankie through the window - which I later lost and felt guilty about.
I remember a neighbour boy who I'd played with at home crying so much in the first week that his older sister was sent for from grade two. I remember feeling confused because I wasn't able to relate to him - we never played again, because at school the boys and girls didn't play together.
I remember pretending to be asleep at my table when everyone else sat on the floor for a story.
Posted by: Suze Oz | 21 August 2009 at 07:52 PM
Being absolutely unprepared. My parents hadn't taught me anything - the alphabet, counting, nothing! I remember wondering how all of the kids learned those things immediately and that I was always working while they were done with their papers and playing.
Posted by: amy | 22 August 2009 at 12:45 AM
I remember going only for half of the day (in 1980) and wearing my bus number around my neck.
Posted by: Julia | 02 September 2009 at 02:35 PM