I was talking to Sara just now about my poor little grandson hating his nursery but gradually coming to terms with it, then I got to thinking about my own experience as a toddler.

Back then my parents were very poor, my father had been injured during the war and lost a leg, he later needed to have the amputation taken back further so I assume that he would have lost his job over it and that there was little in the way of benefits back at that time. My mother needed to go to work to help support us, two adults and three children.

I can remember my brother and I going to this nursery, more of a creche really. After lunch we had to have a sleep and the older children were in one room and the toddlers in another, I can recall standing in the doorway watching my brother fighting with another boy.

My brother is fifteen months older than me so he then left to go to school which just left me there. It is strange, I can remember being pushed to the nursery by the girl who lived next door to us but have no recollection of how we got there when my brother also went.

One day Evelyn, the girl next door, gave me two sweets, a green on and a yellow one. I was sucking one of them on the way to nursery, such a treat as sweets were still on ration. When I arrived at nursery they took them BOTH from me and didn't give them back. I still haven't forgiven them and I am now sixty-one!

Another vivid memory was regarding the after lunch naps on canvas camp beds. One little boy used to regularly wet his pants so I remember thinking that it must be nice or he wouldn't do it so I forced myself to do it one day and it was horrid! I didn't do it again.

I have no idea how long I went there for but certainly remember a Christmas so presumably the one when I was just three. Once my father was able to find work my mother stopped working and I was certainly at home with her for some time before I started school. I was certainly with her when I was four as I can remember what we did the day King George VI died and that was February 1952.

So do you have any memories of attending nursery?

I never did.

My father died when I was 2 and my mother had to work. Her mother lived with us and took care of my brother, my sister and I. I remember always wanting to go to Creche, it sounded like so much fun and I thought I was missing out.

My sister is only 14 months older than me so when she went to school I was terribly lonely and remember sneaking off and going to play with a friend after my gran said I could not. I never told her the truth and when she said she had been looking for me I lied and told her I was playing in the yard all the time.

I always think it is strange how we remember certain events from our childhood.

I am pretty sure I must have gone to nursery - Mum says she used to push me there in the pram/buggy seeming we didn't have a car at the time. It does babies and young ones good to socialise with children of their own age, I think. It is funny how you remember incidents from your childhood for many years

Vague memories of receiving a half orange every day, and a bottle of milk. The orange was great, the milk not so great. The crates would be left in the sun, and by the time we got them mid-morning they were warm. Yuk.

I remember my childcare, but not so much my pre-school.
At childcare I remember when I was about 2, making a dinosaur puzzle and butterfly paintings. When I was about three, I remember the naps - everyone laid down on the floor - and that one day a little boy was naughty and bent a spoon. He got a massive telling off.
I remember talking to some of the other kids about cousins, they all had cousins and I didn't so I felt sort of lonely. I also remember afternoon tea outside and, when playing outside, how I always wanted to go next-door and help with the babies.

I loved it! I screamed the place down when my mum came to take me home as I loved all the toys and activities , and the company of the other children, as I was an only child.
There was a huge garden (or so it seemed) where we kept chickens, there was a pottery shed and we painted in the garden at great easels. We did cookery and gardening and all sorts of great stuff. I particularly remember the wooden bricks with letters on. They must have been painted from stencils as they had bits missing from them. True, Jane, you remember the strangest things!

I was an only child, my mother worked more and more as I grew up so soon became bored at home and asked to go to school when I was 2 (I remember the day). My mother arranged for me to start nursery school just before I was 3, which led to kindergarten and infants school. I had nearly 2 years extra before my classmates when I moved and joined the first year of infants after we arrived in Finchley. I had learnt French as well as arithmetic and learnt to read at home before I began. It could be frustrating being taught things I'd done already but gave me two more years of friends and funny stories (some which can't be repeated in polite company...). I was also in love with two teachers (Miss Firth (dark) and Miss Harvey (fair)) and held their hands at playtime when they were on duty, and also met my first girlfriend, Susan Henley, who was in my class. I'd love to know where she is now.

I went back when I was 11 for a day and don't think I knew anyone including the teachers, but had a great time. The place hadn't changed a bit either.

Funny how I can remember incidents from nursery school when I was 3 years old. I know I was the trouble-maker at school because when we had nap time, I had the spot next to the teacher (or whatever they're called). Each child had a mat that was laid about the room and my spot was next to her and everytime I'd lift my head to look around, she'd lay her hand on my back to let me know she was watching.
One day when we had play time outside, one little boy wouldn't get off the tricycle so I grabbed him and bit a chunk out of his arm. How awful is that?

Years later after high school, I attended secretarial school for awhile and it was the same building as my nursery school. I think I was a much better attendee that time; at least I never bit anyone in typing class.

I didn't even go to kindy or preschool - we lived 25 miles from town, and the school bus trip was 90 minutes each way, so it was tiring enough starting school at age six ! I could read by the time I went to school, but had no idea about mixing with other kids as I was an only !

I don't think any of us in my neighborhood attended nursery school. We all had mothers who stayed at home and I also spent a lot of time at my Aunt Lydia's, across the street from us. That's where I learned the joys, and dangers, of operating a wringer type washing machine. I still remember begging to be able to help and thought it was the best fun available! We all basically started the process of *formal socialization* in Kindergarten together.

I never even got to go to kindergarten. My mother worked from the earliest I can remember as my father had died when I was 6 months old. She had 3 children to raise -- not working was out of the question. My socialization came in Catholic school in first grade. I just idolized the nun that taught us and knew that when I grew up I'd be just like her. Of course, I grew up, and things simply turn out that way! In any case, mass every day, prayers, learning, all lasted only a year and then I was sent to public school. My mother was not happy when the nuns would whack my brother's hand with the metal edge of the ruler. Hmmm, could it be that he was always getting into trouble???

I went to a cooperative nursery school, where the parents would take turns helping out the teachers. I can still remember some of the books that read to us, like "Mike the Steam Shovel" and "The Little Engine that Could".