1st grade....Cone Tradition

Annie's first day of school (8/12/2009)...starting 1st grade! Her cone and Kurt with his cone in 1982 when he started 1st grade. Matt, Kurt's dad, has a picture like this too, but we were unable to find it!






History of Schultüten (school cones)
(Info from the internet)

If you have never seen one before, you might feel a trifle bewildered. What is this large cone-shaped object in front of you? An artistic version of a traffic beacon perhaps? A particularly decorative dunce's cap? Now you are getting closer. Turn the funnel around so the pointed end faces downwards and there you have the solution: you are looking at a traditional German Schultüte or school cone.

All over the country at this time of the year, six-year-olds exchange the carefree childhood of kindergarten for the serious side of life – "der Ernst des Lebens" – when they spend their first day at school. For nearly 200 years, parents have attempted to publicly mark this transition and sweeten the blow by providing their offspring with the candy-filled cones to clutch during the opening ceremony.

The origins of the tradition can be traced back to Saxony, Thuringia, Silesia, and Bohemia. As early as 1817 in Jena and 1820 in Dresden, children starting school were being presented with simple, conical paper bags, such as you can still find at a greengrocer's or outdoor market, containing pastries or candy.

Other children looked forward to picking their bags from the Zuckertütenbaum or sugar-bag tree. This magical tree, so the story went, grew in the cellar or the attic of the schoolhouse and all good diligent first-graders could pluck one of the delectable cones from its branches. In some areas, real trees on the school grounds were decorated with the filled cones. In 1928, Albert Sixtus and Richard Heinrich produced a popular illustrated children's book called Der Zuckertütenbaum. It is still in print today.

By the turn of the century, it had become fashionable in Saxony and Thuringia to send children color postcards on their first school day, invariably depicting a child hugging a giant Schultüte or standing on a ladder and plucking one from the candy tree. The sender would wish the schoolchild good luck and an enormous cone.

So….this is actually a great way to take away the "first day of school jitters". It changes the focus of being afraid of a new situation and into looking forward to a fun tradition of the first day of school.






When she got home on the first day we were so excited to see her, unfortunately she did not feel the same. I gave her a huge hug when she got off the bus and so did the little girls while she just sat there. Then we had this conversation:
Mom: Annie we are so excited to see you we missed you so much today. You don't look very excited to see us
Annie: I'm not
M: But we just missed you so much...didn't you miss us at all?
A: No, not at all
M: Not even one teeny tiny bit?
A: (thought for a very slight bit) No, not even one teeny tiny bit!

I guess I'll just be grateful that she loves school so much and try not to take it too personally!

This little girl is Emily and is Annie's bus buddy...she and her mom wait with Annie for the bus everyday, especially when the little girls and I are not ready to leave the house and more especially in winter when it's rainy or REALLY cold!
Also, surprisingly to us Annie ended up with her same teacher from last year. I didn't even know she was moving up and we are the only ones from last year that ended up in her class again. Annie and I were both thrilled. She loved Ms. Melissa and I think it's perfect since we'll be leaving half way through the year and she'll have a new teacher then. This way it's just one new teacher this year instead of two.