Week 2: Sharing Memories of Grade 1

I am 5th from the left

Over at Olive Tree Genealogy blog is a Genealogy Writing Challenge. It's 52 weeks of writing your own memoirs.  Lorine will be posting a weekly prompt each Sunday on Olive Tree Genealogy blog under the topic Sharing Memories

The first week's prompt was about Kindergarten. You can read Lorine's blog post for the first week at Challenge: 52 Weeks of Writing Our Memories - Kindergarten Days

As to my time in Grade 1 the first thing that comes to my mind is my teacher Mrs. McMinnimey. I thought she was a Witch. No she was NOT a nasty person. I was actually really fond of her.  However she always wore what I thought of as witch's boots. They had high heels and were high up her legs. She almost always dressed in black and she had very long hair. I guess at some point I figured out she was not in fact a Witch but the image still sticks in my mind almost 40 years later.  Mrs. M. was really strict and she didn't tolerate a lot of shenanigans. She expected a lot from her students and would let you know when she was not pleased.

It was in Grade 1 that I started to get an interest in art. The Teachers were impressed as I was way ahead of most people my age when it came to art. However as far as the other subjects went I was no Rhodes Scholar. It was at this time that I also started to realize I didn't really like school. This stayed with me until I graduated from Grade 12. School was not my favourite thing!

I have a weird memory of the smell. The primary end of the school with K, Grade 1, 2 and 3 had dirty orange shag carpet and it smelled musty. In fact I am told that a few years later the school had to remove the carpet for health reasons. Too much mold and must in it.