Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember everything - it’s a blessing and a curse.

FCPS ‘76 - I was in second grade and that whole year was all about The Bicentennial - even our school pictures were with a 1776 flag as a background. I did my very first “research paper” on Uncle Sam using the library materials and thus began my fascination and interest in research! I missed the Hawaii unit because I was out for an entire week with chickenpox - got it from my little sister. Her private kindergarten closed for a week because nearly all 12 students were out sick.

What else do you want to know?

Wow you old as dirt

Wow. You can’t write in proper English.

I went to elementary school in the 90s in Northern VA. I also have some memories of preschool (just bits and pieces), also in northern VA!

I have a ton of memories from elementary school....kindergarten and playing on this huge, amazing wooden castle playground. We had a school meeting and we all sang, "we will, we will rock you". I went to half-day kindergarten and remember making things from macaroni and we did a whole performance at thanksgiving dressed up as native americans (ugg). I went to a new school 1st through 5th grade in the same district and the kids were really mean.

I was the smallest girl in class and was bullied viciously. I was severely targeted by two boys on the playground, who tormented me constantly. One of them pantsed me on the playground when I was 7 and they got suspended for several days and never really came back to class. The kids NEVER forgot about that and brought it up through high school. There was a group of mean girls who were awful! I got in trouble for pushing another kid off of me once at school, but my parents pushed back pretty hard, as I was really just protecting myself. I never got in any physical fights, I was just pushed around and mostly it was verbal.

I did have a good friend who had just been adopted from Costa Rica in 1st grade and she spoke only Spanish when we met. We immediately became friends and we would call people "caca" and giggle, thinking no one else knew what it meant! I didn't know any other Spanish lol.

I remember taking scissors in kindergarten and looking at my long-sleeve turtleneck and thinking about how it would feel to cut my shirt and did a small cut on my shirt....

I approached a boy I liked at a school dance and tried to get him to dance with me when I was 8....

Anonymous wrote:Just reflecting on some of the posts in here about roasting, bullies etc and it's making me reflect back on my elementary school days and all the shenanigans I got up to.

I used to walk up to boys, punch them on the arm and run away as fast as I could. Those horrible "How can you tell if someone is Ethiopian" jokes were popular and kids were repeating those constantly. I started sneaking cigarettes in 5th grade!

Of course we were told not to do these things, but I feel like the powers that be understood that we weren't terrible kids... that we were learning how to be in the world and testing our boundaries.

What are your memories of elementary school? What were some "bad" things that your friends / class got up to?

A lot of hitting. I remember going into the gym to watch the Challenger lift-off - when it exploded they just sent us back to class with no explanation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember everything - it’s a blessing and a curse.

FCPS ‘76 - I was in second grade and that whole year was all about The Bicentennial - even our school pictures were with a 1776 flag as a background. I did my very first “research paper” on Uncle Sam using the library materials and thus began my fascination and interest in research! I missed the Hawaii unit because I was out for an entire week with chickenpox - got it from my little sister. Her private kindergarten closed for a week because nearly all 12 students were out sick.

What else do you want to know?

Wow you old as dirt

Nope. PP is young. I graduated high school in '76 LOL.

I remember playing the double jump rope games on the playground. We had so maybe songs for that. And games of kickball. And Oregon Trail in the computer lab.

I don’t remember at bullying- at least none to me and none that I witnessed. Also dont recall any extreme poor behavior. Talking out of turn was about the worst it got. There was definitely no chair throwing, swearing or disrespect to the teacher, or any of the insane behaviors that are rampant in most public schools now.

I have so many memories of ES! I remember all of my teachers, including one I felt bad for because the kids were so mean to him.

I remember spelling tests and handouts with Hanukkah and Christmas songs we would sing in music class.

I remember getting sent to to the office to use the scary paper cutter thing for my teacher when I was in 2nd grade.

I remember metal lunchboxes and foil wrapped ding dongs and hot dog lunches once a month.

I remember friend arguments where girls would side with one or the other and I always refused because both were my friends.

I remember field days, presidential fitness tests and rope climbs.

I remember new math and venn diagrams.

I remember mock elections.

I remember my friend shoplifting mini rubiks cubes in 5th grade and selling them at school! I was shocked but didn’t know what to do.

I loved elementary school. I went to elementary school late 80s-mid 90s in a small Midwest town that was having a boom. The elementary was brand new and my 1st grade teacher was a new grad and we adored her. She was amazing and so sweet, even after I left her class. I went to aftercare and sometimes she would walk down and ask a couple of us 4th graders to come help her in her classroom (prepping crafts for her 1st graders, room decor, etc.)

Some other things I remember was our library. We had the coolest librarian and on library days, before we were released to browse and check out books, she had a book selection she would read aloud to us. She was crazy and animated and would get into all the voices and characters. It was great.

I also remember the chocolate peanut butter bars. They were like Reese’s holiday shapes (the pumpkin, tree, Easter egg), but made in a giant sheet pan and cut into squares.

I also remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance daily. A 4th grader was picked daily to go the Principal’s office and lead it over the loud speaker.

Anonymous wrote:How many remember when they had a bathroom accident in elementary school? It happens at least once with most kids.

A couple of times and a lot during high school. We moved to a different town, and I didn’t like using the toilets at the new school. We had to ask for permission to leave during class, which was embarrassing, so I never did. To make it even worse a group of guys hung around the toilets during breaks and lunch. They were always harassing guys going in, so I avoided using them

I remember that my group of friends, about six girls, would take turns booting one of us from the group at a time by ignoring and walking away from her at recess. Within a day or two, she would be allowed back in. It sounds terrible, but that was pretty much the only really mean thing we did among the girls, and our class otherwise didn’t really have drama. I was in the G&T class, so it was the same group of kids together until 6th grade.

My DD is a 5th grader in a full-time G&T class, and maybe my memory is selective, but the girls in her class (and her grade in general) sound so much more toxic. Many stories of meanness, intense competitiveness, and some girls forming a “smart girls club” of only the smartest girls in a class where everyone is smart.

My elementary class was mostly kids of immigrants and low to upper middle class. Some kids wore Reeboks & Nikes, but a lot of us got clothes & shoes from the cheap store, and it was no big deal. None of us hung out together after school until middle school. I would call my BFF on the phone and we’d chat for an hour. There might have been some girls who had their period by 6th grade, but if there was, none of us talked about it. Some girls in Gen Ed were more developed and had boyfriends. Girls in my class found this very fascinating, but none of us expressed an interest in dating till we moved on to middle school.

Anonymous wrote:Yes. I remember all the kids sitting on the floor in the school library to watch the Challenger launch. And then the teachers pushing the TV cart out and the guidance counselor come running in. The next day, all the outer space theme decor was gone and we learned about the Middle Ages for a few weeks instead.

I grew up in a town that was very proud of its cheese factory. The cheese is very popular and well-known to this day. In marching band the twirlers did not know that they were supposed to catch the batons. They just threw them up and retrieved them from where they fell. The twirlers and the band would march through town in the 4th of July parade, and whole herds of dairy cows would march too, so you had to try and keep in time while side-stepping the cow pies.

OMG I was just talking about this with DH a few days ago. I was in 3rd grade and one of the astronauts was the best friend of my classmate’s dad. Each of us wrote him a question on a file card, and he wrote a response to every single one and gave each of us his autograph. Then we saw the launch on TV in our classroom. I just remember being in shock, but too young to really process the tragedy.

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school in a working class-lower middle class area in the early-mid 90s:

I grew up in an area that got a lot of snow in the winter, and we’d have to bring or wear boots in the winter, and bring snow pants to wear over our clothes for recess. We played on the snow mounds created by plowing the black top and the parking lots and they seemed huge at the time!

Kids were poorly behaved even then, but they were sent out of the classroom to the principal’s office and could get before or after school detention, or even weekend detention, starting in 2nd grade.

We read actual whole chapter books as a class and then had guided questions about them.

The “gifted program” took a bunch of kids from multiple schools and threw them together in a room once a week (for almost a full day, if it wasn’t your assigned school the bus would take you there after dropping you at your assigned school in the morning) for various “exciting” extension activities like extra math worksheets and film strips about art.

Most of the teachers were older and counting down the years until retirement. There was very little teacher turnover, for better or for worse.

Hmmm, this sounds a lot like my childhood!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember pushing a girls from my class on the swings so that she would give me a picture of Johnny Depp from Teen Beat.

Voting for Dukakis in our class mock election and being the only one.

I was shocked he lost my 2nd grade class election too! And even more shocked in the general. Ooh my sweet baby liberal heart had no idea what was coming.

I remember giving a speech to my class about how the Iranian hostage crisis wasn’t Jimmy Carter’s fault. I was 8. Another girl have a speech for Anderson saying she thought someone should vote for him so he wouldn’t feel bad. I think Carter won our class but it was a close vote. Anderson didn’t do badly because the girl who gave the Anderson speech was a well liked pretty red head.

I feel like they couldn’t really do that sort of an exercise in a third grade class with the last few elections.