MY BOOK...............LILAGCS B2 - 7

Saturdat May 19, 2012

Going To Grade School

Kindergarten thru 1st Grade

 I will now go back as far as I can remember to share with you my grade school years.

 The East school was the one that I would attend. It was also referred to as Reynolds School. I remember that Mom told me that she had also attended Reynolds school when she was a little girl, except it was a different building when she attended.  It was a wooden building. Sh e told me that one night she had a dream that the school burnt down and the next day, it did burn down!

I can definitely remember my first day of Kindergarten. I remember the classroom as if I was there right now. The teacher was very nice and very pretty. I recall that my mother came with me the first day of school.

     I wasn’t afraid and remember taking my rug to nap on and that is about all I remember about what I took to school. I remember that there was a special door that we would go out when it was recess time. I didn’t remember the teacher telling us that we would need to return through that door when recess was over.                                                                                                                                                    

I remember playing that first recess on a lot of the things there on the playground. The biggest thing I remember is that when the bell rang to go back in, I followed the crowd and when in the door that all the “big kids” when in and not the Kindergarten door. I remember being petrified and remember everything looked so big. I eventually was discovered and taken back to the Kindergarten classroom.

     During Christmas that year I had my picture taken by a lady from the Spencer Daily Reporter. That picture was run in the next issue showing me and a couple others of my classmates. We had some really neat building blocks to play with and lots of other toys. I can’t remember much more that resting on our rugs, going out for recess and playing in Kindergarten.

1^st Grade Year

My First grade year was interesting. The teacher’s name was easy to remember because her name was Miss Reynolds, the same name as the school.

I was excited when I was able to go to the first grade room. I recall being so amazed at the neat pictures and the alphabet cards placed on the top of the chalkboard. Miss Reynolds was so helpful to me it seemed. I don’t remember too much about doing anything except when it came time to learn to read. We had our books and the main characters were Dick and Jane plus their cat “Puff” and their dog “Spot”

My experience reading was all right. I was able to learn word by word the stories. They were short stories and I didn’t have too much difficulty pronouncing the words after Miss Reynolds pronounced them first. I would copy her speech.

I always enjoyed when we had our milk time. We took turns passing out the milk cartons, everybody got one. When it was parent visitation time, I remember mom came and sat in the back of the classroom. I would perform extra special when she was there. I delivered her milk when it was milk time. We also had art time and we drew different things, many times it was related to the stories we were reading at the time.

As I reflect back, we never had any pronunciation drills of lessons. Everything was done by sight. I remember I had asked to sit closer to the front so I could see better.

Each day when class was over, I would walk with Miss Reynolds on her way home. She lived in the same general direction that the Fire Station was so I could walk almost to her home before turning to go to my home.

Each time we got our “Report Cards” I was always excited. I most always got A’s in all my subjects that made me very happy and proud.

At the end of the year, Miss Reynolds announced that we were going to have our eyes tested. We were instructed to cover one eye and then the other and position our arm in the direction that the picture card in the front of the room was placed.

Discovered My Sight Problem

I remember that day after school when I went home I said to mom, “Mom, they covered up my good eye!” As it turned out I was examined and it was discovered I was almost blind in my left eye, I only had 19% vision and had to go to a medical doctor to get fitted with glasses. I remember it was Dr. Collester who worked with me; was also the doctor that originally delivered me when I was born.

I started wearing glasses at the age of 6 and really didn’t have too much trouble wearing them.

I was promoted to the 2^nd grade and later in life mom told me that Miss Reynolds told her that I was going to be a straight A student, she said I was very intelligent. Well that was only the beginning of my education and as I progress each year became more difficult.