Apparently Friday was the last day of school here in Queensland, for 2017.
I had no idea! Clearly my kids are well past school age if it doesn’t even cause a blip on my radar 😉 .
When I was at primary school in the 1970s, I used to LOVE breaking up day!
And it had nothing to do with being dumped by your boy/girl friend 😉 .
It’s not a term I hear much these days: “breaking up day”. That’s what we used to call the last day of school for the year. It was a wonderful celebration – a party to end all parties!
Everybody brought a plate and we gorged ourselves silly on watermelon and stone fruit, cupcakes and chips. As a special treat there were even iceblocks and soft drink!
We didn’t have to wear school uniform, and spent the day doing fun things, like:
- Christmas craft,
- playing games (board games and also outside games like “duck duck goose”, “What’s the time Mr Wolf”, and “Red Rover”),
- listening to pop music,
- having water fights (with our teachers!),
- or going for a “free swim” in the school pool.
It was one of my favourite occasions of the whole year!
Has anybody else noticed that breaking up day just doesn’t seem to be special anymore?
School winds down over a couple of weeks and by the last day there’s hardly anybody left. And if the kids DO attend, they are put to work scrubbing desks and cleaning classrooms!
Yes, it is quite a few years since I experienced the excitement and fun of breaking up day. If I mention it to my own kids now, they just look at me blankly!
Does anybody else think it’s a shame that this Aussie school tradition of breaking up day has gone by the wayside?
NB I first published this post exactly 5 years ago today, but decided to update and republish it as I was thinking about it over the weekend …