"Those were the days..."

They say that school days are the happiest days of our lives … Year One certainly enjoyed themselves this afternoon when they put their history skills into action to find out about what school was like in the past!

We were delighted to welcome some of the grandparents from our community into school who really brought history to life for the children by telling them about their own school days. 

We were particularly interested in what happened if someone was naughty:

“You had to write lines of the same sentence over and over again”

“You got six of the best!”

Many of our grandparents had been hit with the dreaded cane.  At one school the Head Teacher passed on this distressing duty the Deputy because he had been in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and had too many bad memories of beatings to be able to do it.

We also found out about playground games which had been popular, what sort of food or snacks were provided (“bottled milk with cream on top”) and what was worn (“itchy jumpers”) along with other aspects of school life.  We were fascinated to meet some grandparents who had survived the Blitz and they brought in their gas masks to show us.

The children performed a couple of songs they had been working on for our VIPs, who then stayed on for a cup of tea and a biscuit.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all our gorgeous grandparents for taking the time to visit us.  We hope to meet them again soon!

If you have any memories of your primary school days please share them by commenting on this blog!