School Bells, School Bells, Reading & Writing & Rithmatic

Ah, the first day of school. I've been out of school for more years then I can count, but I can still remember getting ready for the first day of school,
The excitement of setting the new clothes out, along with the leather shoes & socks and of course the new book bag that smelled just like leather.

We were not allowed to wear jeans, we did not have uniforms, so we bought our own clothes and had bobby socks with our Buster Brown shoes.  At that time we had to cover our heads when we attended Mass. On Sundays we wore hats, but during the week we wore" babushka's".  I still have a couple of  them and some of my hats that I shared with my Mom,believe it or not!

 Catholic grade school kids sat in the same classroom all day, we did not change classes. Nope, the same room, same nun and the same kids. Day after day after day. We accepted it because we didn't know any better. There were two Catholic Elementry schools, one was Holy Cross, a Polish church and they sang beautiful Polish hymns in harmony. and then our church St. Cecilia's, it was Irish and Italian. Our choir consisted of the children, us while the Polish church had an adult choir.

Attending Catholic grade school, the first subject of the day was - yes, you guessed it - Religion.
Back in those days we were allowed to pray, not have a moment of silence, but actuaally pray AND salute the flag!  Catholic school did not have any outside activities or gym class but they did have recess where they blocked off the block on the side of the school in mis moening and mid-afternoon, We walked home for lunch every day because they did not have a cafeteria back in those days, those days were the 1950ty's.We had certain rules to follow, attend Mass each morning before class, &  devotions during the week that we had to attend.  Those were our activitiesalong with music and art classes.

Today most of the Catholic schools have lay teachers and not nuns. They change classes and have outside activities along with religion. Prayer is acceptable and Religion is taught as a subject.
I taught CCD once a week, CCD lasted one hour,  they can't learn everything that we learned by attending Catholic grade school everyday. it was hard to teach what I planned in one hour. Fourth graders are great, they still listen to you, are respectful and want to learn.  I am glad I had that grade even though I did not know how the kids in the other classes acted.

If your little one is going to school for the first time, be prepared for them to fall in love with their Pre-School or Kindergarten teachers and it will break your heart to know you are no longer number one in their lives, it did mine because I was not prepared for that (lol)

No longer do I have little ones going to school, my grandchildren are all in school, but they don't share their day with me, they share it with their parents as it is suppose to be but wouldn't it be nice to get a phone call and hear one say Hi MeMaw - guess what we did in school , etc, etc, etc.

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