My goodness... that is 5 decades... a half a century!!!!!!!!!! BUT... I was only 4 when I started!
So for my posterity... here is my kindergarten story:
I LOVED kindergarten. I went to Kindergarten in Tempe Arizona back in 1961 and I remember it so well! I asked my mom so many times when the first day of school was that I think she couldn't wait for me to go either! I had my dress all picked out for a LONG time to wear on the first day.... it was a white dress with small black polka dots and the skirt was nice and poofy! oh yes.... girls wore dresses and boys wore nice shirts and pants. We had two teachers. Mrs Slinker was the main teacher and she had an assistant. We had a lot of kids but I don't remember how many.
To me our kindergarten room was amazing! On the back wall were
shelves full of toys... LOTS of toys. One of my favorites were the lincoln logs BUT... I didn't get to play with those too much because they were considered a boy toy! we had small tables and chairs where we always had snack time. There was a gathering area where the teacher called us over and we had to sit on the floor with our legs
crossed and our hands folded in our laps. We went over the usual numbers and colors, alphabet, days of the week and sang songs, learned our name and addresses and phone numbers and learned manners too.
But my absolute favorite part of this gathering time was Willie the Weatherman! (attached picture). We would have to look outside the window and explain what kind of weather we were having and dress Willie according to the weather. Of course living in Arizona it was mostly sunny and warm so he pretty much looked the same everyday, but I loved that part. Also in our classroom were some little areas that were divided with little walls and filled with a theme for our pretend play time. Like one room was a kitchen and one room had play tools etc... and we would pretend cooking or going to work and things like that. We also had rest time.... I did NOT like rest time. We had to put a little mat on the floor and lay down for what seemed to be a LONG time.
Lots of the kids took little naps but I never did... I wanted to keep playing and learning stuff. We had a playground with swings and monkey bars and a HUGE slide. I was going up the slide one day and the girl in front of me went down tummy first and her feet went last and she somehow kicked her feet up and kicked out my two front teeth. I was NOT happy about that! One thing I enjoyed so much was growing garden. We had a little plot of dirt outside our door and we planted all kinds of vegetables and took care of them and then we ate them!! I still love to grow a garden and eat fresh vegetables! We also went on a field trip one day to a farm. I had never been to a farm before and it was so fun to see all the baby animals! Our teachers were very nice and everyday when we left we hugged each of them goodbye and we always felt veryloved by them. Kindergarten was great fun and I learned a lot and I think I was a perfect little student too! Here's my report card to prove it!!
So there ya have it... one of my blast from a half a century ago stories.... It doesn't seem that long ago but somehow I now feel like such an antique!!!
