Piggy Tales – First Grade in New Jersey

This is the third in a 15-week series that I’m participating in over at Mommy’s Piggy Tales.
This week, the topic is first grade. That’s my sister, my dad, and I on the roof of our duplex in New Jersey.

When I was in first grade, we moved to New Jersey. We originally moved out there for my dad’s job, but we didn’t know anyone there or like it much either. My dad’s job wasn’t all that my parents had hoped for, so we weren’t there for long. More on that later.

My mom had been homeschooling my sister and I until we moved there. She ended up getting a job and decided to send me to public school. I lasted all of 6 weeks before I was begging to be back at home.

I distinctly remember being extremely bored and feeling like I knew all the things they were going over. I remember that they put me in second grade reading and I had to walk down the hall by myself once a day to the 2nd grade classroom. Then I would proceed to get in trouble nearly every day because I read the entire page we were on before the kid who was reading aloud was even half finished. I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just was a fast reader. The 2nd grade teacher would actually watch my eyes to see if I was staying with the reader. Ugh.

I learned later that they wanted to put me in second grade math and second grade spelling, but were unwilling to move me up to second grade. Seriously? What else is there in 1st grade?

So after six short weeks in the public school system in Mount Holly, New Jersey, it was back to homeschooling with me, hooray! Thanks, mom :)

We lived in New Jersey for 14 months, and moved back to Colorado, into the same house even! It so happened that the people who were renting the house we were living in were just moving out, so we moved back into the same spot, which my parents later purchased. We did visit several fun places while we were there, like the George Franklin Museum, Please Touch Me Museum, Independence Hall, and several other places in Philadelphia, but we were sure glad to be back in Colorado. I can’t really imagine living anywhere else. Visiting is nice, but you just can’t beat Colorado!Not the best picture, but it was the best I could find right now. It was taken 6 years ago with a film camera about 15 minutes from where I now live. 

~S