What were you taught when you first started school.?

Learning to read with the Janet and John books. Nature study with a huge radio must’ve been about 3 foot-2 foot wide!! Going from pen and ink to ballpoint pens……

In my first year at school I learned to read and enjoy books, although I think I had a head start at home so it all came quickly and easily to me. I was assigned to help another girl in my class (who happened to be the daughter of our next door neighbour). She struggled to read the first 'Old Lob' children's early reading books, but I think I was kind and patient. I don't think she ever made much progress, but I often wonder how she's getting on.

Maywalk I don’t suppose your g/ children live in N Ireland. Mine actually go to the school named after architect and definitely get to know the history, though don’t know what age ?

Sorry about the grammatical error in my first sentence! I was mortified when I read it this morning! Obviously a
predictive text error. We were taught very well. I remember Parsing. I did like English
even although I hated primary school because of the teachers I got. I even noticed then that the married teachers seemed nice but not the older unmarried ones that had the 'pleasure' of teaching us. I had no married teachers at Primary school. The ones we seemed to get seemed very bitter and it seemed they resented us.
Yes Callistemon21 I liked that poem too. It was trying to memorise all the poetry that was the problem! Also the spelling and the times tables. But looking back I think it was to help exercise our young brains.

Not about myself, except we were taught how to draw a 5 and an 8 on slates.

DS lives in Norway and a friend’s son’s school has focused on climate change for 2 weeks. It has frightened the young lad (aged 8) to the point he has developed some strange behaviours and now needs counselling.

What a shame for these children having the weight of the world put on their shoulders.

My granddaughter has been obsessed with Egypt and Tutankhamen since she was 3. We had been to the museum and the Egyptian exhibit caught her attention. It’s wearing off now she’s 4.5 - more interested in unicorns!

I remember learning at the age of 4 that my teacher didn’t have much sympathy for a shy, sensitive child!!

When I was in kindergarten about five years old, I remember there was a litle "shop" built in the classroom, it was such fun buying and selling, at the same time learning to count.
Those were the days.

My daughter learned about the Titanic at infant school. Caused a lot of problems taking the ferry to France for a holiday. She was terrified. Ok on the ferry coming home thought

I've just googled the song to remind me of the other verses. I can't believe we sang something like that to our families and the vicar!

The juniors used to do a show for parents at the end of the summer term. Sir always taught us new songs for the performance. I remember learning a sea shanty which started... Sally Brown she's a bright mulatto (sp?) Way! Hay! a roll and go.
She drinks rum and chews tabacco. Spend my money on Sally Brown.

Not the sort of thing 8 and 9 year olds would sing now.

To read and do simple sums.

Not to brrrum my toy car loudly on my desk.

And that, although I might see my older brother at school, I couldn't join him in the playground because my first school had separate playgrounds for boys and girls. Which apparently upset me. Though not for long.

I remember learning about snowflakes and having to fill in the dreaded news book. I remember making Easter baskets out of squared paper and being the only child who didn’t get an egg from Easter bunny, so after school the teacher took me to a shop and bought me a chocolate chick.

Sorry etc

I can remember the excitement of learning to read. Kitty sees Rover was boring until I got into real stories, The Three Little Pigs eetcI felt I had arrived. I can remember how I felt. Wow.

My only first memory was the frieze around the room with a for apple and a big picture of an apple and we used to recite it together a says aaa for apple b says baa for ball etc etc and also reciting the times tables which I m still good at today not reciting but knowing my multiplication tables I don’t really have any many other memories until I min senior school
We also had a dappled rocking horse grannymardarby and a reading corner and Wendy house but don’t have any recollections if going on or in them

welbeck I spent my war years, all 21 months of them in Hither Green, Lewisham. I lived there and started school there, all 3 weeks at my first school was there.

In January 1943, just before I was born, our local primary school was deliberately bombed during a lunch time raid. 36 children were killed and 6 teachers. It is said one of the accompanying fighter planes then flew low over the school and strafed those in the playground. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Sandhurst_Road_School This reference refers to the location as 'Catford'. That is wrong, it was Hither Green, Lewisham.

My mother said that for the rest of the time we lived there wherever you went, whether standing in a shop, or in a queue, at the doctors, there would always be someone present who was related too or had a close connection with one of those who died.

I'd forgotten that lovely poem until I saw your post, rascal
Yes, I learnt it at school.

I loved The Song of Hiawatha too and his love for Minnehaha.
It's far too long to post here and we didn't learn it by heart, of course.

I remember we was taught about animals etc in Primary 1 (Scotland). The teacher was very nice and let us pull a cord under the animals neck to hear what sound the animal made. She also could play the piano and we liked singing. I hated school after Primary 1 as all the other teachers were frightening. Further on in school we were taught a poem by Walter de la Mare and I can still remember it. That was nearly seventy years ago. The poem is called Silver by Walter de la Mare:
Slowly silently now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way and that, she peers and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
This may not be completely correct as it was taught a long time ago.

It all comes flooding back. “Wet” playtime = it is raining so we all have to stay in the classroom + the boys dominated all the good toys like “wooden” Mechano (yes) and left us with a crumpled pile of ancient comics and a mangled lump of smelly khaki green plastercine.

There was a dappled rocking horse that I never got to go on and the bossy boots in the “baby class” hogged the Wendy house and there were 2 playtimes in those days.

Also, stubby dark pencils, exercise books cut in half horizontally (to save money?) fat wax crayons that always went over the line when colouring in, and prayers before school dinners and at the end of the day : this one…
“ Thankyou for the world so sweet/ Thankyou for the food we eat/ Thankyou for the birds that sing/ Thankyou God for everything” before putting our chairs up on the desk to make it easier for the caretaker. ?

That it was normal for a teacher to keep a bottle of vodka in their desk drawer

apart from the bombing raids, there were also many accounts of civilians being targeted by enemy fighter aeroplanes.

www.quora.com/Did-the-Luftwaffe-ever-attack-civilians-during-the-Battle-of-Britain-My-grandmother-claimed-she-was-strafed-while-putting-out-the-laundry-one-day

welbeck

dear Maywalk, big up to you.
what was the evacuees' school like, do you remember ?

Yes I remember it well Welbeck because it was an old Baptist Church that had been confiscated by the government for the duration of the war to be used as an evacuee school.

I passed my 11+ while there to go to grammer school but my mother had neither the money or the coupons to get me a uniform and other necessary items to go to that school. it didn't bother me though and when I left school to start work at the age of 14 there was a paper shortage and my leaving certificate was written on a sheet of paper taken from an exercise book.

ElaineI

Why were you machine gunned Maywalk? Do you mean shot at - if so who did that? Or does it have a different meaning? What a difficult upbringing you had. I do hope life improved for you after the war ended.

When German planes came over to try to hit Devonport Dockyard, they would drop any bombs they may have had left over on civilian areas on the way back, probably trying to get the railway lines.
DH remembers that.

I found a photo of some in my class, age about 6, on the internet on a site about the history of our town.
I do look a bit gormless ?

If you search, you might be surprised.