Your first day at school.

My mother took me into the classroom and handed me over to the teacher, who I came to adore; she asked what I would like to do, I said sit on the plasticine table, she said, oh that's full up, you can do chalking. So typical of school life.
I liked school and wasn't at all fazed by being left in a classroom full of people I didn't know. When I think of nowadays, with home visits, six separate afternoons in the classroom with parents in attendance and in the term before Reception, staggered admissions and no full days until half-term, I understand why we are a tough bunch.

My first day at school in 1957 I remember clearly. I was sitting at a desk and a girl sat next to me. Our mothers were talking and after all the mothers left the classroom this girl elbowed me in the chest and I remember her doing it at other times. Apparently our mothers had met at the hospital where this awful girl and I were born on the same day. I think they thought we might become friends. No chance of that though I was soon to meet my best friend who I was friends with all through primary school.

My first day was a nightmare as my brother had pre-warned me about how awful school was and I didn't want to go. I was taken in as a Rising 5 in the Autumn term. The children were all rushing round the room jumping from island to island. When the whistle blew you had to be on an island or you were out. What fun, you might think. But not for me. I was made to join in but was soon out. I didn't like it and I didn't want to do it so I kicked the 'old' teacher all around the classroom. I was soon extricated. It was decided that I was too young and to bring me back in the January. I thought I'd won and escaped going to school!

Starting school on my 5th birthday on September 2nd 1958 felt like the best present ever. The school was very close to home and I walked to school through the park with my 6 year old brother and 7 year old sister - mum stayed at home with my 3 year old brother. I had been looking forward to going to school for as long as I could remember and my first day was wonderful. My teacher asked if anyone could say the alphabet and a few of us could and did - then I volunteered to say it backwards, which was my party trick, and the teacher was so smiley and full of praise I just wanted to get that feeling every day. (I never lost the desire to please my teachers and a telling off at school was a very rare occurrence.)

Within a few short weeks of me starting school my mother had left home (and all her children) so the school and my lovely teacher became surrogate parents. I got extra milk if I wanted it (I always did) and some days the school dinner was often the only food we ate apart from sugar butties!

The school I attended in 1946 is now a Victorian School Museum - much to the amusement of my DD's and GDC.
I remember the big coal stoves and the teachers warming their backsides in front of the class.
On my first day I had a packed lunch in greaseproof wrapping with my name on which had to placed on a table with all the others, when it came to break time mine had disappeared. We did come from a very deprived area with some very poorly dressed kids so I like to think now that it went to someone who needed it more than I did

My first day at school was marvellous. I didn't start until the February intake, as my birthday is the end of November and I was hopping mad when I discovered that I could not start in September.

We were in a large classroom with a clear floor space between the teacher's desk and ours, where we played singing games once or twice a day.

On our first day we were given our places and told to open our desks and show our mothers the contents. There was a reading book, an arithmetic book, jotters and a small metal tin that contained cardboard counters, about the size of a half-penny (this was Feb, 1957). They were red on one side and blue on the other. There was also a book mark with our name on it for each child, written by hand by our teacher, Mrs. Hamiliton. After our mummies left, Mrs Hamiliton checked the register and made sure that we all could tell her our name (first name and surname) and our address. Presumably so she knew we could ask for help if we got lost on the way to or from school.
We didn't have school dinners as the school day was only a half day for the "baby class" a term I found most hurtful, as I regarded myself as a big girl now I had started school.

My aunt was the headmistress of a tiny school in the middle of Devon. We went to stay with her in 1948 when my sister and I were recovering from measles. I remember the dinner lady bringing the dinners in her van. The big jug of pink custard . It was just like the school in the Miss Read books and I loved it.

And needing a note from home to be excused milk. I, and several others, didn`t have notes, so a tiny girl, with lovely red hair, called Irene Jepson, used to down about 8 bottles a day, she should have been huge, but stayed tiny! Wonder if she`s on here?

Oh yes! Warm milk on radiators-to this day the very thought of it makes me want to vomit.

Lots of lovely memories here. I can add a couple more of my own.

I started in 1959 when I was 4. I can remember learning to read at home with a book with sentences like "I am up" "I am on it" - with a picture of a child standing on a chair. When I came to a word I didn't know I would drive my mum mad by plonking the book down on the ironing board and asking her, and pulling a chair up to the ironing board to kneel on, and lean on the fresh washing! No wonder she wanted to send me to school!

At the village school, when it rained, there were rows of wellington boots out in the entrance area, each with names in, and pegged together with a clothes peg, also with our names on.

We had to walk right through the village to the school - no pavements, just steep grass verges - so the parents at our end of the village took it in turns to walk with us.

I remember learning the word "blizzard" as we sat inside (a rare treat during playtime, but as there was a blizzard outside...) We were trying to thaw out our little milk bottles on the radiators, whilst we perched on the little benches under the steaming gabardine coats in the cloakroom area. (I doubt they had turned liquid by the end of playtime.)

I lived on a farm in Canada and went to a one room schoolhouse - 30+ kids in eight grades, ages 5/6 to 13/14. At six, I was the oldest in my class of four. Our teacher was only 17 - she would have had some teacher training during the summer after she finished grade 12. As we were the first of the baby boomers to start school there was a shortage of trained teachers for the growing school population. I can't even imagine what responsibility it was for a 17 year old to be all on her own, teaching eight grades!

I can't remember if it was my first day, but certainly not long after I started in grade 1, when one of the two boys in my class wet himself. We all cried (there but for ...!) and were sent home early. I would have walked the mile on my own back to our farm. It was a pleasant walk during spring and fall but very cold in the winter when we were all bundled up in snowsuits that, if it was snowing, never quite got dry before it was 4 o'clock and time for the walk home (we played out at lunch and recess times, even on the coldest days). Fond memories!

I remember my first day in 1948. Don't remember getting there though. My mum didn't drive, except for the tractor. We must have gone on the school bus, which picked up on the other side of the churchyard next to our house.
The teacher was called Miss Winnell, a lovely lady who wore her hair in one if those rolls round the back of her head. On that first day she looked rather forbidding to me though.
My mum had instructed me to raise my hand and say "please may I be excused" if I needed the lavatory, but of course I'd forgotten that when the time came. I'd been sat next to a horrible boy called Michael Handy who'd been taunting me about not getting any dinner if I hadn't got my dinner money, my mum had already handed it over, unbeknown to me. Anyway, I was thoroughly upset and I wet myself. Michael Handy announced with great glee that I'd weed on the chair.
Mum had given me a little red shoulder bag containing an apple and a biscuit for break time and it was lying on the floor in the wee! Don't remember how it was dealt with.
Lunchtime came and that day it was ham salad, I spied a tiny green caterpillar waving at me from a lettuce leaf so told Miss Winnell who, along with a dinner lady came to look, told me not to be so silly and to eat my dinner.
The playground had the usual Tarmac yard but also a huge lovely field surrounded by hedges and adjoining farmland. There was an enormous conifer with branches to the ground and in later days once I was enjoying school we'd play riding horses on the branches, make dens with hay under the hedges and generally had a lovely time.
I remember the smell of plasticine, the alphabet charts and world map on the wall, the pencil sharpener with a handle on the teachers desk. The roaring fire in the winter with the crate of frozen milk bottles thawing in front if it. The brass topped fire guard. The blackboard on an easel.
Happy, happy days, but that first day was miserable.

I was well over 5 and couldn't wait to go to school.

Don't remember whether it was the very first day, but I do recall a girl sitting in the corner and crying because she'd wet herself.

I wondered why on earth she'd done it - I'm afraid I felt a mite scornful - since the teacher was extremely nice and one of the first things we'd been told was that we didn't have to ask if we needed the loo - we could just go. Having been shown where they were, of course - quite close by.

I too, NfkD, remember being confused by the fact that so many children were crying. I was taken to school by my two older sisters who were in the junior school. They hung my coat and my Mickey Mouse gas mask on a peg and said I was to wait for them at home time by the gate. They pushed me inside a classroom and left. I sat down and stared in amazement at the line of mothers, with howling kids, who were waiting to speak to the teacher. She had two ladies who were helping her. One of the ladies came and spoke kindly, asked what my name was. I remember her next words. "You are a sensible little girl, not crying like those other children" I remember staring at her and thinking, I know, but what ever happened to them, hasn't happened to me yet!
At home time I went and waited at the gate for my sisters, I didn't realise there were two separate entrances to the large site which housed three schools' infant, junior and senior. I was blissfully unaware of the hue and cry that went on for two hours. Apparently, our neighbour was convinced I had been kidnapped, my mother said "Don't worry they will drop her at the first lamp post" This confused me because it was still daylight when I was found. The most news worthy item was the fact that the Headmistress burnt her toast. I thought about that a lot!

I remember running all the way to school, standing in line and giving my name and address to the teachers who were registering everyone before my Mum and Grandma caught up. They had obviously prepared me well.

Later in the week, I remember a teacher saying that four counters only made four in a particular configuration, a Y shape. As my Mum had told me to ask if I didn't understand anything, I asked why that would be....

Bet they thought they had a right one here....

I too was an only child and couldn't wait to start school. I remember my first day as being very confused as to why so many children were crying. All those other kids to play with. Bliss!

I also seem to remember there was more than one intake a year? Is my memory right?

My own three all looked forward to starting too. I think I may have taken front door step photos, but where they are goodness knows. Must have a sort out.

I couldn't wait to go to school. Back then we weren't allowed to start until after we were 5, unless there was a younger child at home.I was an only child, so I had been wanting to start school for ages. The boy next door started the same day as me and we were in the same class. I remember we had to wear a badge made from a square of blue card, with our names written on in red ink. Some of the other children were crying and I couldn't understand why. I guess some of them were probably younger than me.

That`s triggered a memory Starlily, there was an air raid shelter in our school playground, but I started after the war, so never saw the inside of it, thank goodness.

I thought that when my mam came for me at dinnertime that was it, i had been to school and it was over and done with. I cried all the way back, and in the classroom i sat on the hot water pipe and cried some more. Then the air raid sirens began to sound, and we had to go into the shelters which had been built in the school playground. They were underground and were pitch black inside, as there were no lights except a couple of torches the teachers had. I was terrified, but soon found that the roll of barley sugar sweets and tube of Horlicks tablets which we had been handed at the entrance and told not to eat, were being scoffed by everyone, so I joined in, and things didn't seem so bad.
Unfortunately a bomb was dropped on a nearby factory, and we all got frightened, although no-one was hurt. Quite an exciting first day, and the sweets were an unexpected treat.

My first day at school remains very clear in my memory,
It was the. Opening day of the new school, after we were taken to classes, and they sent our mums home, a lady(turned out to be a much loved teacher), placed a pink card in front of me and told me this was my name,I was furious, they had sent my mum away, and now told me I was called pink card.I objected strongly, and this story followed me through till I left primary school.

Inner city school, 1960 and all I can remember is a long corridor full of crying five year olds and a very scary woman shouting at us.
Then sitting in a classroom with the same woman shouting at a little boy who was crying for his Mam.
I was too scared to cry, or to tell anyone that I had wet myself.
There was to be a lot of smacking of little ones at this school. Not one fond memory of school at all.

I remember my mother taking me to put my name down for school. The headmistress of the infant dept wrote my name in a book. I must have been wearing a blue mac because she admired it and said 'Will you be wearing that blue mac when you start school?' and I thought what a silly question, how will I know if I'll be wearing it, it depends on the weather. (I didn't say so, though!). I started school in Coronation year and we made rosettes and went to see the coronation film at a local cinema. Our teacher said we were not allowed to buy ice-creams - then, guess what - she bought one and sat eating it. In the next class the teacher always checked at morning and afternoon register if we had hankies - we had to hold them up. On the wall was the face of a gollywog. If everyone had a hanky the golly's mouth turned upwards in a smile. If someone didn't have one, the mouth pivotted down into a frown. )I hope I'm not banned for a racist term.)

I remember assembling in the dining hall with our mothers on the first day; we sat on benches at refectory tables. We sat with Mum's best friend and her son who was starting on the same day as me. All I remember is Auntie's (as I called her) hat with artificial fruit attached to it, the fruit was bobbing up and down as she chatted to Mum. I loved Mum's best friend but wasn't so keen on sitting with her son as I wanted to be with the other girls who were starting that day.
That is all I remember about the day - nothing more!

Oh my goodness, do I remember my first day at school.?
It was 1961, and my teacher was Mrs Ade.
I cried my eyes out when Mum left me, but what made matters worse was seeing Mum looking through the window at me when all the other mums had gone. I remember Mrs Ade picking me up, standing me on a table and rattling her keys in front of me. I guess that she was trying to distract me.
Mum continued to look through that window every day until my Teacher told ME to tell Mum not too. Mum was not happy.

I remember mum taking me and leaving me at the school gate to go and look for friends that either lived in our crescent or from church. I remember wearing an orange and brown dress. Nuns ran the school. We were told to stop when we heard the first bell and to walk to the class line on the second bell. I remember a bee landing on my dress and I was too scared to move until a kind nun rescued me. The classroom seemed huge. School dinners were vile?