Ellsa was so excited. Today was the first day of school. This was the day she started grade one and got to play with the big kids.

Ellsa got up early and put on her best outfit. The one her mom got her just for this day. Very carefully, she took her new china doll off her shelf and packed it safely in her backpack. She smiled, today would be a good day. Show and tell was her favorite part of school. In fact she enjoyed everything about school. Playtime, story time, music time, craft time, she couldn’t understand why her big brother hated school so much.

Ellsa closed up her bag and went down to breakfast. It was her favorite cereal, Peanut Flakes. She tried to eat too fast and got a stern look from her mother. “You have plenty of time Ellsabelle Elephant,” She said with a shake of her head, “The school house won’t disappear you know.” Ellsa made a face that said she didn’t quite believe that, but did eat a bit slower.

By the time she was allowed to leave the house, she practically flew down the street, her mother yelling after her to remember to look both ways when she crossed over. This was also the first year she was allowed to walk to school by herself, even if her mother watched her all the way from their doorstep. When Ellsa reached the corner she glanced back at her mother and then very carefully looked both ways, twice just so her mother would know she was doing it properly. She crossed the street and headed straight to where her friends were playing in the playground after carefully placing her backpack in the line up along the wall.

Ellsa was having so much fun playing with her friends that she almost didn’t hear the bell and then it was a rush to get her bag and line up with the others. As she was waiting in line, she was fairly bouncing in her excitement. She wondered what her new classroom would look like.

The first thing Ellsa noticed when she got to her classroom was that there was a coat rack outside instead of a cloakroom inside the room. It confused her for only a moment. She hung up her bag, changed her shoes, and skipped into the classroom. It was then she stopped dead in her tracks. Instead of a nice carpet with a semi-circle of mats and water and sand tables there were these strange little tables that were only big enough for one person. In fact, each table had only one chair, and they all faced the same direction.

Ellsa slowly walked the rest of the way into the classroom and sat at a table that was near her friend Betsy. “Where are all the toys?” she asked. Betsy shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. Ellsa looked around the classroom thoughtfully. There was a blackboard on two of the walls, a row of windows along one wall and… She smiled and started to feel better. There, along the back wall where she would expect to find the cloakroom, was a bunch of cupboards and drawers. The toys HAD to be in there, but she just had to check to make sure. Ellsa got out of her seat and started to walk towards the back of the class.

That’s when the teacher walked in. “Everyone take your seats please.” She called out in a musical voice. Ellsa hesitated, looked at the cupboards, back to her desk, and then over to the cupboards again. She sighed, turned around, and went back to the chair she had chosen. There was no song to say good morning. The teacher asked everyone to be quiet and started writing on the blackboard at the front of the room. “My name is Mrs. Blank.” She said, and then handed out cards and pencils to everyone in the class. She wanted everyone to write his or her name.

Ellsa was a little put out that she didn’t have any crayons. She liked drawing pictures and it would be nice to add some pretty flowers to her name. But she made the best of it and very carefully wrote, “Ellsa Ellaphant” across the card. The teacher came by and smiled, “That’s not how you spell Elephant,” and gave her a new card. She then wrote it on the blackboard for Ellsa to copy. Ellsa was starting to get frustrated. This was too much work. She got up and started to walk to the back of the classroom. She got halfway there when the teacher called her name and asked her to sit back down.

After lunch, Mrs. Blank found Ellsa out by the coat rack. She had her backpack open and she was fingering the lovely china doll. She had little tears in her eyes. “What a lovely doll!” Mrs. Blank said as she came to squat down beside Ellsa, “What’s her name?” Ellsa sniffed, “Her name is Charity, I brought her for show and tell.”

Mrs. Blank looked surprised. “We don’t have show and tell in Grade one,” She said gently, then smiled her brightest smile, “but would you like for us to do something special today with Charity?”

Ellsa looked up at her teacher and rubbed the tears from her eyes. She smiled just a little, “Really? Something special?” Mrs. Blank nodded and smiled again. She told Ellsa to put the doll gently on the big teacher’s desk and then go out to play.

While Ellsa was outside playing, she could see Mrs. Blank through the classroom window. She was sitting at her desk writing and nodding to herself. Ellsa was curious and went over to the window to see more. The teacher looked up right then and turned her head to look out the window at Ellsa. She was smiling! Ellsa smiled back, waved, and skipped off to play with her friends.

The bell finally rang and the children filed noisily into the classroom. Mrs. Blank called for everyone to quiet down and then took her place at the front of the class. “Today, since it is the first day of school, we will do something different. How many of you brought something to show the class today?” Ellsa put her hand up first, a bright smile on her face, and then five other timid hands followed hers. Mrs. Blank smiled brightly, “Today, one at a time, you may come up and tell us something about your special thing.” Six little faces brightened up. Mrs. Blank went on to explain the rest of her plan. She would split the class up into 4 groups and each week one group would bring in something that went along with that week’s theme and give a short oral report about it. The class started to talk excitedly about this and after a couple minutes Mrs. Blank asked them to quiet down again and started to ask the six children to come up one at a time to talk about the things they brought, encouraging the rest of the class to ask questions.

When Ellsa went home that afternoon she skipped into the house and sat down with her mother to have milk and cookies. When her mother asked her how her day went, Ellsa sighed but smiled, “It’s a lot of work mom, but the teacher’s really nice!” Ellsa told her about the special “Show and Tell” time they would be having each week.

Ellsa smiled to herself as she went up to her room to put her things away. It HAD been a good day after all.