What was your reception year like?

[abacucat]

We were talking about this amongst some friends and how different it is to now. I am in my mid 50s.

Some of this is from memory and some from my mum. I started school at 4 and a half. The youngest was 4. From the start we sat in rows at small desks with lift up lids. We were in a class of 30 with no TA, just 1 traditional teacher.

We did school work from the beginning, learning to read and write. I remember tracing alphabet letters with my finger along with the whole class. We had homework from the end of the first week. The only play apart from playtime was playing with plasticine on a wooden board that we individually kept in our wooden desks.

We also had a nap at school on fold down camp beds. I have no idea where these were kept, but I remember lying awake on the camp bed and been told by the teacher that I had to rest even if I was not sleepy.

We were taken to church regularly. I had never been taken to church before so remember this.

We played outside at lunchtime and breaks in all weathers and had outdoor toilets. We were allowed a snack and water at break, but nothing in between. School sold biscuits at break and many kids had a biscuit at break time.

About a third of my class were immigrants mainly from the Indian sub continent, including my best friend.

By the way I know this all happened in reception because I loved school for year 2 and they did things very differently there with us all sitting at group desks, so easy to demarcate reception from other early years.

Changed school in year 2 I meant to say.

Each day we were meant to do some English and some maths.
English was write something (about a sentence) and draw a picture about it. I got sent to show every teacher my brilliant work when I wrote two sentences. My dsis was very embarrassed.

Maths we had pockets on the wall of cards with 10 sums on of varying difficulty and you were told to take one from the difficulty colour you were on. They were very easy and took me less than 5 minutes even when I was on the top colour.

Rest of the time was fairly free play, although we used to watch "Words and Pictures" once a week, and one afternoon we would join together with the rest of the infants to sing.

Only started school proper when I was 6 and school ran from 8-12 every day. Still remember sitting in the hall with my mum on the first day.
We use to keep our books in a chair bag and our school trip was to the Zoo ...

Went to a school where there were a lot of Jewish and Christian children - we were separated for Religious Instructions and school was usually only a third full on Jewish holidays. It was only because our Christian headmaster loved bacon sandwiches that our tuckshop could sell bacon and egg sandwiches ...