Primary school was a crazy time. Here are some of my best memories from primary school, a local government primary school.

Prep

  • being cute kids
  • Fresh Food Fridays
  • Journal writing every monday after the weekend
  • lining up at the end of lunch
  • we would have a stand of children’s books, including Mr McGee, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Possum Magic, and the like

Mr McGee

Events

  • Footy day
    • the only day where I’d get a lunch order for a pie and a Quench drink
    • half the school went for Collingwood (boooo). I went for Sydney so I usually got a prize for Best
    • there was also a parade for other codes such as rugby and soccer
  • Easter Hat Parade
  • Tournaments and competitions such as the ICAS competitions, AMC, and chess
  • School sports such as Athletics Day at the local athletics track, Cross Country, and Swimming Carnival, including going to District and Division levels
  • End of term barbeques
  • Footsteps dancing classes and the gender divide
  • A performance company would come in and perform a production once a year, such as Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and Snow White
  • Healthy Harold, Slip Slap Slop, No Hat No Play and you have to stay in the shaded BBQ area

Term dates and holidays

  • early dismissal on the final day of term
  • hanging out with friends during the school holidays
  • long weekends and public holidays
  • last days of school, when we’d find out who’d be in our class and teachers next year
  • Year 6 Graduation ceremony

Mathletics

Academic computer activities

  • Mathletics, which originally had 5 levels which became 10. We could also dress up using the money we won.
  • Reading Eggs
  • Skoodle
  • Scratch, the programming cat
  • Grok learning in Year 6
  • Run that town and Coffee shop, two games we played for ‘educational purposes’ in Year 6

Camps and excursions, before which we’d get permission forms to sign. We also had fun end of year activities.

  • Prep Breakfast, Year 1 Dinner, Year 2 Sleepover
  • Collingwood farm
  • Healesville Sanctuary
  • Scienceworks
  • Cloudy with a Chance of Meetballs
  • Melbourne Museum and Immigration Museum
  • Mount Martha (year 4 camp)
  • MCG
  • Philip Island Adventure Resort(year 6 camp)
  • MSAC wave pool
  • buffet, Big Hero 6 and bowling (year 6 graduation)

School concerts were held every two years

  • Year 1 concert
  • Year 3 concert - Mickey (Toni Basil)
  • Year 5 concert
  • Year 6 graduation concert

Fire drills were run once a year usually. We were told about it beforehand and made to go stand at the oval.

Morning routine

  • lunch orders in the morning
  • payments, bank books and permission forms would be brought to the office with a partner

Students

  • people randomly vomiting, and teachers covered it with sawdust
  • people with allergies / asthma had their condition and action plan displayed across the school

Teachers

  • teachers were on yard duty
  • teachers could put you in the naughty corner
  • if you forgot to pack lunch, teacher would lend you money to buy something at the canteen

Finally, teachers are amazing. I remember every one of my teachers. It was hard to fathom that during primary school, we didn’t realise that teachers had their own lives, their own families too. We remember out teachers but, except for a select, exceptional, few, we were but a revolving cycle of children going through the most formative periods of our lives.

Canteen

  • you would line up to buy food
  • canteen lady May would sell chips, pies, zooper dooper rip offs, dim sims
  • Cup noodles were 1 dollar, but noodle boxes were a few dollars
  • we would complain about how expensive everything was. We would do that into high school too. Little did we know

Games

  • Gogo crazybones (this was massive popular when I was in year 2)
    • we would flick them at each other’s to try to knock them down. Our version of marbles essentially.
  • Two square, four square, and downball (against a wall)
    • high bounce balls being lost on the roof, in the drain, or outside the school was extremely common.
    • if it went outside the school we would have to get a teacher on Yard Duty to get it for us.
    • I usually brought the ball so ended up losing more than 20 balls during my time.
  • coolmathsgames during Wet Day Timetables
    • fireboy and watergirl was an absolute classic
  • electronics day
    • never owned electronics but played on my iPad
  • iPad games
    • Minecraft, Subway Surfers and Chinese Writer were some games I played
  • gangup tiggy, bob down tiggy
    • terms such as ‘no foxguarding’
  • fun quotes such as ‘spell ICUP’ and ‘spell PIG backwards’

Four Square

Technology

  • 3D printers, which were stolen one night, and the police came the morning after
  • a couple of old big monitor computers in the rooms between classrooms for everyone to share
  • the Resource / ICT centre which had a full set of desktop computers
  • a tray of portable notebooks
  • BYOD for iPads began in Year 5

School assemblies

  • We sang the Australian anthem at the beginning of each school assembly, which was weekly on a Monday morning
  • every week someone would get an Encouragement Award
  • every month someone would get Australian of the month

Songs

  • I like Aeroplane Jelly - absolute classic
  • the school bell was replaced by music for a term or two I think