Ah yes. My kindergarten was attached to a preschool. While still in preschool I was smitten with Pauline - She had black hair and the long legs of a kindergartener, which she was. An older woman, with grace and poise, not like the mere girls who surrounded me. But we were seperated into different playgrounds by a fence. Cruel fate! When my class was assigned to make an alphabet book and illustrate each letter with things that began with that letter, for the letter P I drew Pauline. But in the end it was not to be. Pauline had no interest in an immature fellow like me. Oh, womanhood! What strange formulas guide your decisions? I could have made her so happy…
Every day the teacher would pick a different kid to go around and take attendance. We were supposed to walk around the room and call out the other kid’s name when we got to them. I was sooooooo shy I wouldn’t talk to the teacher, and would barely talk to the other kids. My mom had to stay the first day with me because I couldn’t stop crying. I still remember how painful it was and how scared I was of everybody who wasn’t in my immediate family. It was awful.
Anyway, Mrs. Williams picked me one day. I started crying, and she could tell I was scared out-of-my-mind, so she told all the kids to put their heads down on the table, and not look at me. She then walked around the room with me and I whispered the kids’ names to her.
She was such a great teacher.
I got over being so shy with my classmates and teacher, but I still have seriously shy moments, even now, 25 years later.
Mine: buying my first real present (for my mom) a tiny dish that was her favorite color blue for a penny.
BUT- better story is from my baby brother’s kindergarten: his teacher wanted to hold him back a year 'cause he was “uncoordinated”, showing our folks the raggedly circle he’d cut out of paper. They went home, asked him to cut out the drawn circle, same thing. raggedly edges. They asked him - is that the closest you could come to cutting on the line? “Oh, you wanted it on the LINE!!!” parenthetical - he went on to play in the little league world series several years later…
I was four years old, I remember so very clearly sitting under this huge oak tree and not hearing the recess is over bell, when I realized that there were no other children around , I just sat there and imagined all these things about this this huge tree how long was it there, how many kids sat under it, where those really eyes up there? I went to my home town a few years ago and went to see that huge tree, guess what? it wasn’t huge.
I was amazed that one kid knew every hockey player on the local team by name and number.
When the teacher tried to trick him with a guy just traded, he answered instantly about it.
That’s the only memory I have, but it sure impressed me. I hate sports.
I have some great memories of being a 5 year old, but the only thing I liked about Kindergarten was one particular snack: a graham cracker “sandwich” that had chocolate icing in the center.
When I was in kindergarten, we had a time set aside for naps (this was in the late 50s, when kindergarten was more like nursery school is now). We all had our blankets and laid them out on the floor.
At one end of the room was a long bench. The blankets were stored there. I was in the morning kindergarten, and the blankets for the afternoon kindergarten were there. So one day I got a brilliant idea – I’d rest on the bench and use the blankets for afternoon kindergarten as a pillow.
I did this for a little while. One of the other boys noticed what I was doing. So we used to race to get the blankets. Sometimes he’d win; sometimes I’d win. Finally, I talked to him and we decided the best solution was to alternate days.
This worked for a little while, but others noticed what we were doing. They wanted to get in on it, so we began to work out a rotation. It began to get quite big – I got a chance at the blankets every two weeks. I recall telling one person he could have them on Saturdays. . . .
Then I noticed that there were always one or two extra blankets for the morning kindergarten – people who were out sick. I dropped out of the group and set up there, enjoying the blanket all by myself for the rest of the school year.
Oh gosh. So many interesting memories. I think I’ll go with the safest one.
I had the hugest crush on a guy named Ryan. I still have the yearbook so I suppose I could look up his last name…At the time, I lived in California and there was a little Mexican boy named Gabriel. He was Ryan’s best friend. He always used to run up behind me and give me kisses. I always pushed him away but its a fun memory anyway.
Well, it’s nothing like the sandbox orgy, but I met my best female friend in kindergarten. She moved when we were in 4th grade, but man, she was a cool chick.
Motorgirl and everyone else: What sweet stories!
I remember only two incidents from kindergarten. One is weird, and the other was unpleasant at the time but is kind of cute now.
The weird memory is pretty straightforward: During the annual hearing test (listen - beeeeep - raise finger), there was one kid who did really poorly. His name was Marlon, and he was the one who ate paste, filled his pockets with gravel during recess, and otherwise behaved strangely. (There’s one in every group, don’tcha know.) Anyway, his hearing test results were quite poor (don’t remember specifics, of course), and I remember the school nurse checking in his ears. She got these thin forceps, reached into his ears, and pulled out little wadded-up balls of paper. His hearing tested much better after that. I have no idea why I remember this.
The second incident I remember from kindergarten is easier to explain as to why it stuck in my memory.
To set up, I was a restless little kid. I’d probably be diagnosed with ADD now, but it has more to do with my mom actively teaching me (and my brother, later) to read before we got to school. All the A-B-C stuff bored me to tears, so of course I was fidgety. I constantly had to work to entertain myself.
Also, as a young’un, my most favoritest TV show was “The Six Million Dollar Man.” I would run around in slow motion, pretending to throw stuff long distances, making that bionic “RNT-RNT-RNT-RNT” noise really loud. I can only imagine how annoying I was.
Anyway, in class, we were all sitting down to quiet time – heads down, arms folded. I guess I didn’t feel like I needed to be all that quiet, because I climbed up onto my chair, making the “RNT-RNT-RNT” noise, moving in slow motion like I had leaped over the back of the chair and was now coming down on the seat.
Then suddenly the teacher, Mrs. Groeschell, grabbed my shoulder, said something curt, and swatted my butt. I don’t recall what she said; I just know she spanked me, then pinned my arms to my body, picked me up by the shoulders, and plopped me down on the chair.
The memory ends there. Strange, huh? I know I was traumatized by the incident for a while, but now, thinking back, it’s kind of silly-little-kid cute. The “RNT-RNT-RNT” sound effect just kills me… 
Oh no! You were THAT kid! 
We had one of those, Robert, loved the Six-Million Dollar Man.
Of course, he was also the Crayon-eater and nose-picker.
Weird kid. I invited him to my birthday party and afterwards my mom asked me why I had invited him. I don’t remember anything significant happening at the party, but he must have struck her as “off.”
Am I married to you? I ask because my wife had exactly the same experience. The kicker in her case was that the infuriated teacher decided that the original test results had to be wrong, and made my wife take the IQ test over. Whereupon she proceeded to perform even better than the first time.
My wife still takes advantage of this incident by occaisionally reminding me that she is a “certified genius,” whereas I, of course, am not. I respond by telling her that I’m a super-genius, and the conversation usually deteriorates from there.
I remember being very excited to be finally going to school, and completely in awe of the kids clinging to their mothers, crying, scared of school! My strongest (strangest?) memory was a little girl used the boy’s restroom and everybody laughing and making fun of her.
My first crush. Robbie. That’s such a sweet memory. Even if when we were old enough to date he didn’t do it for me anymore. I mean he was still cute but hung around with a different crowd, not badboy enough for me.
Then there is my friend that I met in Kindergarten. I’ll just call him Q-Tip because that’s what my best friend called him. He was tall and skinny. We stayed friends all through school. I wish I knew where he was now, but stuff happens. I’ll always remember playing King of the Mountain out on the construction site near the church where our Kindergarten was held.
My teacher, Miss Mahalcheck. (I think that’s how it’s spelled.)
Woo, what a hottie!
My kindergarten building was behind the preschool and to get to it directly you walked down the alley at the side of the building. One day someone had left one of those big wooden spools sitting in this alley & I had to climb over it. It became this gut wrenching teary drama every day for what seemed like weeks (probably days) ‘Do I climb over it? What if I fall & hurt myself? What if my clothes get dirty? Do I climb through it? What if I get a splinter?’ I don’t know why it never occured to me to ask someone to move the thing or, here’s an idea, go through the freakin’ preschool building. It was very traumatic yet completely pointless. Much like the rest of my life has been
My best memory was the snack we would have right before nap time. We had the most excellent cinammon toast I have ever tasted…buttery, sweet, crispy…MMM-MMMM!!
No cinammon toast I have ever had since then has compared.
Um, wow, all this is bringing back so many memories - I think the best memory I have from Kindegarten was the realization that I had finally had a dream.
First, to set up the story, it involves Fisher-Price People (remember the little people, about an inch high, with wooden cylinders for bodies with the hole in the bottom and a ball for a head)(I don’t even know if that’s what they were called, that’s what we called them at home) and the Fisher-Price People Village. The Village opened up and had a barber shop and a movie theater, etc. – well, in the movie theater, the movie is of the village on fire.
So, now that the background is set, I remember swinging on the swingset, talking to my friend, and telling her about this story that happened to me in bed the night before. She told me it was a dream and I was so excited that I had finally had a dream.
In my dream I was a “People” in the movie theater, watching a movie about the village being on fire - and then the movie theater caught on fire. It was the first in a long series of fire dreams.
This is a favorite memory because it so eloquently explains exactly the kind of child I was. We were given some sort of screening test during the year, in which we were taken, one at a time, to be asked a series of questions. I remember being asked to raise (either my right or my left) hand. Then I remember walking across the classroom asking myself, “which hand did they ask me to raise? which one did I raise?” over and over for the rest of the day. I was worried that, in my nervousness, I might have answered incorrectly. I was not, as some children might have been, worried about “flunking out” of kindergarten. Rather, I was horribly embarassed at the thought that someone might think that I didn’t know my right from my left. I still don’t know which hand I raised. Or which hand was asked for. And it still bothers me.
Kindergarten was the first year I was forced to sit in a room with other kids, I had spent the last six years in the country with no other kids around. I learned alot about the wilds.
We sat at long tables, with chairs and kids on both sides. You were always facing another kid.
I used to sit across from the teacher’s daughter. She started sticking out her tounge out at me, when ma had her back turned.
I had what to do figured out in about a week. She stuck out her tounge and I pinched it as hard as I could, and didn’t let go until ma come running over.
Never had that problem again.