Any fellow Americans remember having a field day in elementary school?

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Longjumping_Event_59@reddit

We would usually have this on the last day of school.

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LoooongFurb@reddit

Hated field day. It was like PE class but all day long. One year I convinced my mom to call me in sick and I stayed home and read instead.

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Yes! As a non athletic, uncoordinated kid with a drunk, loves attention mother and father, field day was a special kind if hell for me. Field day made me request that my parents not attend any of my performances growing up.

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Yes, I dressed up as a big banana and almost passed out from heat casue everything under was black and stuffy

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elphaba00@reddit

I went to the same school district as my kids, and we definitely didn't have field days, but they started it up before my kids got there. So until high school, they got field days.

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Riker_Omega_Three@reddit

Every year through 6th grade

3 legged race

Sack Race

40 yard dash

relay races

softball long toss (I dominated that shit for multiple years)

egg toss

Long jump

There was a park near our school so we'd all walk a couple blocks there...each grade wearing a different color Tshirt like a Nickelodean gameshow

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blipsman@reddit

Yeah, we had it. Did a bunch of races, tug-of-war, etc. My son's school does it still, but it's more like a carnival with inflatable obstacle courses, carnival games, bouncy houses than competitions.

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AnUnexpectedUnicorn@reddit

Yep, we had field day, so did my kids. I tried really hard to stay home those days, and I let my kids stay home if they asked to. The only athletic thing I was ok at was swimming. Everything else was just an exercise in boredom and futility in the heat and bugs. One year, instead of field day, our classes walked to the community pool about a mile away. That was a fun day.

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WHowe1@reddit

This was not a thing while I was in school. But was for my kids.

SAME. I was so spectacularly unathletic (and horribly self-conscious about it!) that I genuinely thought "have a field day" meant "feel overwhelming dread" as a child.

We used to go at least three times a year to field trips back when I was a kid (boomer). These were always a liability to the schools back then, so they cut back to maybe once a year. This required the student to pay their way, provide their own meal (or pay for the school to do so), and get parents to sign off on a liability waiver. The student also had to incur no demerits prior to the event.

My brother managed to get into trouble on the way home (kudos for planning, kid!) His crime? He posted a large note on the back window for the elderly couple behind us to see. "Is there sex after 60?" Our chaperone was NOT amused. Her punishment to him? He had to ask our grandparents this question and get them to hand write their responses. Mrs. Longmount (no kidding) was amazing!

Crazycatlover@reddit

I never had that. Sometimes a middle school or high school teacher would take us outside for the period if the day was particularly nice. That's the closest we ever got.

My kids had field day all through elementary and middle school, and liked it better than I did, but didn't love it.

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Naive-Kangaroo3031@reddit

We still have it at the school district where I teach. When I coached track it was my #1 way to recruit kids to play my sport

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Nivlac93@reddit

Yup.

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Standard_Mongoose_35@reddit

In our town, field day was held at the high school stadium and was a track and field competition for the elementary grades. All students attended, so a lot of us were in the stands watching. A couple of schools walked to the stadium bc they were located close. I believe that lunch and drinks were provided.

It seemed like the event was a preview for the middle school and high school coaches, to see what talent was coming up.

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Bright_Ices@reddit

Same here. I hated field day. I was born with a disability that severely limits my stamina, and I’d always end up exhausted with a bad headache on field day. Book fair week was awesome!

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CemeteryDweller7719@reddit

I was never athletic. Field day wasn’t fun for me. But book fair, OMG. I loved book fair. I was also one of the kids always super excited to get the Scholastic book forms. I’d analyze those like the toy section of the holiday catalogue trying to convince my mom to agree to just one more book. I was also kid that got excited about library day in school, lol.

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Blossom73@reddit

ShesGotaChicken2Ride@reddit

We call it Skills Day here in California.

Kids go outside and play all kinds of games and win ribbons, etc.

Then there’s a field trip, where they put all the kids on a bus and take them somewhere like a zoo, a museum, etc

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Thin-Telephone2240@reddit

Yes. In the fifth grade we were taken to the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City to see Romeo and Juliet. There was no preparations before this trip, no discussions of the story. No explanation why we were going. Just busloads of us kids.

I recall the opulence of the place. Really fancy and impressive.

I also recall the different reactions of boys and girls. The boys hooted at the love scenes, cheered at the fight scenes. The girls cried at the mushy stuff and of course the death scenes.

I've wondered if who ever organized the field trip was aware there was teenage nudity in the bedroom scene. Nothing was said at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet_(1968_film)

Jethris@reddit

Living in Pennsylvania, we had a cheap amusement park at the end of the school year.

We also went to Gettysburg every year, a few turn of the century museums.

And 4th and 5th graders went to DC and Philly alternating years.

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nor312@reddit

Was it Knobels? (Not sure of the spelling)

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Jethris@reddit

I loved knoebels! But it wasn't, it was a small park on the conodoguenit.

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hippiechick725@reddit

Dorney?

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KatHumanArt@reddit

Oh man Gettysburg! My friends and I had a running joke about the multiple 'you are here' messages from the giant map room part at the start of the tour.

I blacked out one year. It was so hot, there was no shade, I remember waking up in the nurse's office.

It was the '70s. I am not making this up. They actually SENT ME BACK OUTSIDE, so that I wouldn't miss the event they had forced me to sign up for. I was still shaky and nauseous. I blacked out again in the middle of the event. No idea what happened after that other than I woke up in the nurse's office again. I was terrified they would send me back outside again.

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edkhm1218@reddit

That sounds like a terrible experience! I'm so sorry you went through that.

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Jennis8108@reddit

Yup! And then when we got older we had the pleasure of being picked last to scoot around on those little discs and play basketball or some other humiliation.

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bearcatdragon@reddit

I hated them too!

I grew up in the south, so by the time field day came around in May it was already over 90F and miserable. I am very fair skinned so even with a load of sunscreen, I always burned. I'm also asthmatic and allergic to grass so I always had to take a bunch of benadryl and use my inhaler.

The training was actually ok too. It was less like gym class and more like war planning where we each had our own jobs to do- the teacher was incredibly supportive of everyone at their own level- like she was pushing us—- but in such a positive way we were all celebrating as a class each time we did a little better. The teacher was pretty cool—- only class I remember where we all got along and there was no bullying because she was such a powerful force. All year long she did lots of her own extracurricular group building activities pushing us the work together to respect and trust each other.

Maybe it wasn’t fair we won with all that practice when no other teachers were out training their kids… but for me it was a huge confidence booster that if I work hard I could succeed even in things I was terrible at. Honestly I was dealing with depression and trauma at the time at home…. Her getting us out outside for fresh air and sun everyday was good - but her getting the entire class cheering my name acknowledging how much hard work I was doing made me genuinely happy. It made me feel like I belonged there.

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tiffy68@reddit

My elementary school had field days every year. My son's elementary school did too. He's a senior now and just lady week he returned to his elementary school as a volunteer for their field day.

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PacSan300@reddit

Yes, had this in elementary school and in my first year of middle school. They stopped it after that, for some reason. But those days were really fun. They felt like one large recess in many ways.

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downtune79@reddit

Yes, and my daughter just had one last week

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Able-Paramedic8908@reddit

I hated field day.

At my school, it was inexplicably called CATER Day, which I assume is some acronym, but we were never told what it stood for. I remember soccer dribbling races, an obstacle course, hula hoop contests, water balloons, basketball, plus free use of the playground and pavement patch nearby, as well as the favorite activity, water limbo.
We would have tie dye shirts or blank shirts for our friends to draw on, and the water would give a cool effect to the drawings.

Someone’s mom knew how to face paint so she’d volunteer for face painting, and someone else’s mom gave out temporary tattoos. Lots of people’s moms volunteering or just there to watch the games. I think my mom volunteered as a photographer for the yearbook for the day.

I remember field day! I was never the athletic sort, but there were a few games that I was good at.

Yes! I won the hula hoop contest every year.

chileheadd@reddit

Yes, and it really fucked up my head when I was in U.S. Navy boot camp and we were told "today's a field day'.

I wasn't big into sports but I enjoyed the nontraditional field day activities like obstacle course or water balloon toss.

Yes and I had a love hate relationship with it

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timstiefler@reddit

Of course. If only I could go back to those days.

Yes and as the most unathletic kid in my class it was basically a day of hell because we had to take part in at least 3 events.

I got a lot of participation ribbons.

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houdini31@reddit

Never had one of those

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Radiant8763@reddit

They don't do those anymore? What a shame, those were so much fun.

dangerousfeather@reddit

Yeah, that’s how I got diagnosed with a heart condition. Had to stop participating and go to the nurse with chest pain. Being 8 years old in the ER with cardiac concerns sucked.

That’s literally all I remember of field day lol.

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Intermountain-Gal@reddit

I only remember one field day that didn’t involve fitness testing. We went by bus to another school and played with one or two other schools. It was a lot of fun.

I loathed the fitness testing. Nothing was done during the previous months to give us a chance to learn the skills and develop the muscles to succeed. In those days boys had intramural sports but girls didn’t. It also didn’t take into account health issues (I always failed the mile run because running triggered my asthma).plus, from year to year they’d made changes.

There were two things I spent a year practicing so I wouldn’t fail them once again: pull-ups and push-ups. It took me that year to finally get the strength to do them. Nobody told us that the rules on how to do them changed. Once again I failed.

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BlueFeathered1@reddit

Our field days were where we actually were bussed somewhere, like nature preserve or lake camp or something and used as a learning opportunity in nature.

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Prestigious-Wolf8039@reddit

I grew up in crazy land. Field day was working on the school grounds. Raking, trimming, picking up trash. I’m not even joking.

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Rojo37x@reddit

I am actually volunteering at my kid's elementary school field day in a few weeks, so it's definitely still a thing.

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Silver-Bobcat672@reddit

Field Day has never been the same since some idiot invented the "participation trophy."

The entire idea behind field day was to teach healthy competition and have fun doing it.

What we got for it, is an entire generation of people who now want a prize just for showing up at work.

Tell me I'm wrong. When was the last time someone went out of their way to make sure you were truly satisfied with the work they provided?

I remember field day in elementary school. Hated it, because it was run by our gym teacher who was a peaked-in-high-school, Biff Tannen sort of guy.

My kid’s school has field day scheduled in two weeks : )

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river-running@reddit

Of course. I was in elementary school in the 90s. The highlight of field day at my school every year was when the meteorologist father of one of my classmates would bring in a small weather balloon and let us help launch it.

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anneylani@reddit

Yes! We had 1 field trip in the spring, and one field day we're the two highlights. Our was called "Track and Field" which doesn't really make sense.

I remember doing three legged race with my friend, running long jump, standing long jump, tug of war. The tug of war was an entire class against an entire class, it was really fun.

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LadyGreyIcedTea@reddit

Yes, that was a thing every year. We also had an annual track meet in 5th grade that was our school vs. the other elementary school across town, to compete before we merged into one school in middle school. My class was the last class to do it as the following year, 5th grade moved to middle school.

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AdjectiveMcNoun@reddit

yes, we had them in Elementary anf Jr High

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CoachOpen1977@reddit

I remember being physically assaulted by my 2nd grade teacher at field day, when I couldn’t run a mile and he decided to drag me along the ground by my wrist for the rest of the mile.

I never told my parents because I thought they would blame me.

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I remember it, but not fondly lol. A whole day of PE? yuck. I remember one year I hit my knee on a hurdle almost right away and got to go to the nurses' office and skip field day. I wondered why I didn't do that every year! I guess ours was less games and more "field" as in "track and."

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cans-of-swine@reddit

Did people like PE??

It was fun as heck. I won the 50m dash and the 100m dash. They might have even been in yards then (I'm American and old).

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tres-vip@reddit

Yes! We had picnics!

Sure. In my hometown there were (and I'm pretty sure still are) two big field days for all the elementary school students in town. My hometown has a really strong geographical divide between east and west, and each side has a public high school. i grew up on the west side, so one day every year in the spring all the kids in the older grades (4-6) would walk over to the west side high school and do track events. It was a huge deal and we'd spend the days leading up doing races and jumps to pick our reps for each events.

Yes, every year in elementary school. I really looked forward to it and had a lot of fun.

We also did a "Dunk the teacher" event where you could throw a softball at a target and the teacher would get dunked in a tank of water. Perfect end of the school year event to kick off summer.

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lyndseymariee@reddit

Ours was called Super Kids Day. Best day of the year. Wow. This post unlocked some memories 😄

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CPeeps323@reddit

Yes, they still do it. Going to my son’s field day on May 8th

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RhinoPillMan@reddit

Yeah. Loved those little carts that you shift your weight side to side to accelerate.

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da-karebear@reddit

Oh heck yeah. Second to last day of school every year of elementary school. Best day of the year

My sons school does it too

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