Your earliest school memories?

[MyCheeryPearlTraybake]

Being in an assembly in primary school.

1. Playing with the toy farm in Reception. I seemed to spend a lot of time doing that!
2. Asking my mum why I could read and write my name, even though it was the longest name in the class, except for X's name. I was deeply puzzled by this!
3. Refusing to eat the dreaded rice pudding, because it was all that was left if you were on the last sitting, so I had to sit in for the entire lunchtime, staring at it as it congealed and looked even less appetising!

Sitting on my P1 (Scotland) teacher's knee at her desk whilst she marked my work!

Loads of them.
Milk bottles at nursery, with our names on.
Going across the road into the “big school” from nursery, to watch a video.
Nursery teacher tripping on the stairs.

We had a trial afternoon in December before starting in January for reception. We were making a toilet roll Father Christmas which included us tracing round pieces and cutting them out. I accidentally cut out two left hands, went to do a right hand and did another left, and thought I might be in trouble so I hid it.

We were allowed to paint the windows one day. We were meant to be doing flowers, but I wasn't very good at painting, so I did some grass round my friend's flower and admired her painting, which was much better than mine.

Our first assembly, I can't remember what it was about, but we were all put in groups and made an animal mask. Mine was an elephant. We then were meant to say, I think it was a rhyming couplet about the animal, and were shown how to make eye contact and try to speak all together. My group all dried, and despite me trying to get them to speak, they all stayed silent, so eventually I said it extra loud to make up for them not saying it.

In the morning we were meant to write a sentence and draw a picture and do some maths, about 10 questions which I found ridiculously easy. One day I'd spent a lot of effort in doing the most wonderful sentence and drawing with it and had taken much of the morning. I was just finishing when the teacher (Mrs Burns) said "now you need to pack away your work. Everyone should be onto the maths by now. Table at the back go to wash your hands first."
One of the girls as she walked past said "you're going to be in trouble, you haven't started your maths". And I replied, "I'll have finished it before you've washed your hands". And I did. Seeing her face as she walked back and saw I'd finished was very funny.

The little milk bottles with the red straw and the feeling of importance the week you were "milk monitor".

The "big" girls from year 6 coming to play on the infant playground with us and singing "in and out the dusty bluebells".

Someone donated a huge box of (sweet) lollipops to the school, and we were told we could have one each, but it meant no running at playtime. Dm never let us have sweets if possible and this was amazing. We all sat round the edge of the playground sucking while a few of the boys who decided sitting still wasn't worth it ran races in the middle.

My P1 teacher leaving mid year to get married then coming back unexpectedly. When I was a bit older I found out that she'd been left at the altar

I also remember tiny milk bottles (i hated milk) and doing gym in our thick brown knickers and vest.

I remember on the first day (1976) we had to draw a picture of ourselves. A boy was told off for drawing himself with blue hair.

I remember the teacher in reception saying 'I am going to do your presents now' and I thought 'wow! We get presents too!' . What she actually meant was she was going to call the register and you had to say 'present' when she called your name. I was pretty confused because I thought 'present' meant 'gift'. I couldn't understand why we had to say 'present' ?? It was the beginning of many years of wondering why the hell the teachers did some things.

Drinking bottles of warm milk
Listening to Johnny Morris on the radio in the classroom

I remember visiting two nursery schools to see which one I would go to. I remember meeting the head of the nursery I didn’t go to, can picture her quite clearly although I never saw her again in my life and I remember the nursery I did end up attending, which had an indoor roundabout that I was very taken with.

I remember my older brother teasing me when I first started school that I would be going into the "baby class" with the rest of the babies; I was quite disappointed to find out that everyone was about my age, and there were no actual babies...

My clearest memory of my first day of school in 1980 was Sr Benedict waving a banana skin that she almost slipped on in the school yard.

😂

Running away at dinner time and the dinner lady running after me and carrying me back to school.
Learning to read from Happy Venture books.
Hearing about Aberfan and being scared of going to school the next day.

4 years old. New girl Rachel started mid way through the first term of school. Teacher asked who wanted to sit next to her. 'My best friend' offered and got chosen. This made me very sad. So my lovely teacher let me stay in the classroom at break whilst they went off and played and she let me brush her hair. It made me feel very special. I'll always remember Mrs McNamara for that!

Playing in the Wendy house
The smell of plasticine.
Country dancing
A new exercise book, and freshly sharpened pencil
Playing on the massive oak tree stump in the field next to the school
School dinners. Meat pie,cabbage and mash, followed by steamed pudding and custard

Eating raw spaghetti which must have been for craft?!
A boy and a girl crying every single day for what seemed like an age when we first started school-I could never understand why!
Hiding spam (I had never had it before!) in and under my ice-cream scoop of lumpy mashed potatoes.
Collecting conkers on the field.
Playing marbles on the drains.
I LOVED primary school 😊

My primary school teacher (when I was maybe in about Year 2) dressing up as a witch on Halloween and making potions (some kind of chemistry demonstration where liquids changed colour, I think). This was in the 1970s. I have very poor event memory, but that stuck in my mind! I suspect she was the earliest of the influences that made me become a teacher!

Having an accident and being changed my the teachers desk in front of the whole class - I wasn't remotely embarrassed!

Refusing to come back in to class at playtime.

Pretending I couldn't read just to wind Mrs brown up (sorry Mrs brown)

Warm milk and ginger nuts

Being terrified of the older kids - being so mortified when one spoke to me at lunch time. They looked like adults.

Sing hosanna, sing hosanna, sing hosanna to the king of Kings!

Crafting with smartie tube lids

Putting pva glue over my hands and waiting for it to dry so I could peel it off.

Lots of cheekiness. I was one of those kids..ended up with an adhd diagnosis.

Number 3 happened to me too!

Mine were:

Throwing up on the corridor on the way to the dinner hall. Probably at the prospect of knowing I’d be staring at a bowl of congealed rice pudding for around an hour.

Hiding a boiled egg under salad so I didn’t have to eat it.

Lying about getting soap in my eyes in an attempt to get sent home and avoid the dinner hall.

Thinking about it, first year infants was dominated by the horrors of early 80s school dinners and my utter disgust at the whole situation.

Later it was the absolute joy of Come and Praise in assembly. I still do a huge amount of singing!

I remember the cuisenaire rods we had for doing sums, they were wooden and dyed different colours and they smelled nice and I wanted to play with them but they were strictly for sums, so unfair!

Milk that came in triangle shaped packaging like jubblies.

Janet and John books for reading, I liked the texture of the covers.

As I have loads of vivid memories of my childhood, here are some from infant school:

For PE, undressing to vest and pants, then putting our shoes on our bare feet to walk to the assembly hall, past the other classrooms of children who would giggle at us half naked.

After lunch, the dinner ladies would look after us for half an hour while the teachers had their lunch. Usually they read to us, or sometimes we played games. I loved being blindfolded to guess who was speaking in a funny voice.

Being counted out of the classroom, and the door would be locked. The teacher would say “hurry up, or you’ll be locked in!”

One day each year when everybody brought in a toy.

A teacher sharpening pencils the old school method: with a Stanley knife.

Teachers using Polaroid cameras a lot, including while dissecting a fish, and cooking and eating it.

Hallowe’en being discussed like a serious subject, being taught the spelling with the apostrophe, and how it meant “Hallow evening”, or so they said. But I couldn’t work out if witches and ghosts and so on were real.

Children who were made to miss their play had to sit on the carpet outside the staff room, in full view of the other children going out to play. I was so well behaved that this only happened to me in my last term there, and I found it almost exciting.

Hard, shiny, smelly, medicated, non absorbent toilet “paper”
warm milk
a shadow under the door between the one classroom( tiny school) and kitchen and it was a little mouse
having to lean over the sink at the back of the art area as I felt sick and picked at the tap- a pice of chrome came off it and stuck up my nail - it was excruciating- I howled and cried, the teacher thought it was due to feeling ill, my parents were called to collect me and mum had to get tweezers to get the flake of metal out- I was sick when I got home too

PE in our underwear. Most of the girls had matching knickers and vest sets; my favourite was pale yellow with orange flowers printed on the chest.

My plastic Ewok lunchbox with the matching flask that made my orange squash taste like plastic.

Being scared of the headmistress, who had permed hair and cat’s eye glasses. I’d overheard my mum refer to her as a “spinster”, and I’d assumed it was a sort of witch. Sorry Miss Webster!

I remember starting at primary school.

First day was just a taster and we went home at lunchtime.
Second day we were there until 3:30pm but one of the girls ran out of the classroom at midday saying it was time to go. Can't remember exactly what happened next (angry teacher etc) but I know she made it all the way home.

I remember my first week. I was a summer born child so we started at Easter and only did one term of Reception in a separate class. We started over 3 days.
We had a reading test and I surprised the teacher by already reading fluently. The bigger shock was when they found out it was my brother who had taught me. He was 6 years old so only in the class above! They had been starting to realise he was the school genius...