NATIONAL KINDERGARTEN DAY

So I just found out today, April 21st is National Kindergarten Day! I never knew this so I did a search and most of the information was about how to celebrate this day with your Kindergartener.  But what if you graduated Kindergarten 63 years ago, can we still celebrate it? I was 5 years old in 1954, the year I entered Kindergarten in a one room school-house.  If you have watched Little House on the Prairie and remember seeing the school-house on the show, that’s just like the one I went to!  Okay, so I’m showing my age but I can still remember when the short bus (it was a school bus about a quarter of the size of today’s buses) would pull up in front of the house, blow the horn and my grandmother would run me out.

 

 

Back in my Kindergarten days, I remember we learned how to tie our shoes and play outside, I bit different from what the little ones learn now! We also loved to play with clay and I still have the little bowl I made for Christmas back in 1954.

The class “mascot” was a cat name Smokey and he would hang out on the classroom with us. He had a bed in the coat-room and we would all say goodbye to him at the end of the day. I remember one morning we got to school and Smokey was gone but our teacher could hear him meowing. It seems like he found a small hole in the back of the school and crawled outside.  When he couldn’t find how to get back in, Smokey went under the school-house and waited for someone to find him.  Mr. Nessle, our teacher’s husband, was able to get him from under the school-house and bring him back inside.

But there was another night he got out and the next morning, we didn’t hear him meowing. Mrs. Nessle called her husband to come help look for Smokey.  Mr. Nessle found Smokey that day, but our teacher told us he say a friend on the other side of the road and ran across without looking both ways.  The car coming over the hill didn’t see Smokey and he was hit by the car.  Mr. Nessle found Smokey on the edge of the road and he buried him.  I remember back when it happened all the classmates were so sad that we wouldn’t see Smokey anymore. But I also remember how our teacher used this as a learning experience and told us how important it is to look both ways before we cross the road.

 

 

 

Mrs. Nessle wrote a little story about Smokey and how everyone loved him.  The book had a construction paper cover with a silhouette of a cat and we each were able to color the face on the cat.   I still have my “All About Smokey” story, it’s a bit tattered and Smokey lost his tail, but it brings but such memories and to this day I still go back and read the story.

I never knew National Kindergarten Day existed but it sure did bring back some wonderful memories from way back in 1954.

Do you have little ones in Kindergarten or do you have memories from when you were that age?