It was 1951 when I began first grade at Waldorf. My teacher was Mrs. Lecraw and my best friends quickly became Dickey Singer and Jill Brody. The friendship with Dicky was inevitable. We lived a few miles apart, so his parents and mine alternated driving us to school. With Jill it was a matter of choice.

That morning had been pale and warm for early November. Mrs. Lecraw had written the words "Snow White and Rose Red" on the chalkboard. Under it she had written the first sentence of the old Grimm story written almost 150 years ago about two sisters in rural Germany. Next to the words she had drawn a red and white rose bud. We all knew this meant we would be hearing a story. Mrs. Lecraw's dramatic reading made the morning fly.

After the story we searched our desks and took out our notebooks and pencil boxes. The notebook pages were unruled. The pencil boxes held twelve pencils in an inner box that hinged out and could be tucked into the outer box to form an A frame. This would display the pencils and make them available for use. I liked to arrange my pencils with the points down and in a rainbow order from red to orange, to yellow, green, blue and finally purple. I remember still how each Colorbrite pencil shone with the enamel finish that matched its inner color. There were no silver, gold, white or black pencils. In fact, lead pencils and pens were not allowed until junior high school.

In our notebooks we copied the words from the board. We took a long time to do this. We had to make decisions on what color to use for which word. I had gotten good at shading the first letter of a sentence. This meant lightly and smoothly applying a halo of color in and around the letter. Most people had to use yellow to achieve the right transparency. However, with care I had been able to use even the darkest colors (purple and blue) with a smooth translucent effect. On another page of our notebooks we drew a single letter from the story: "S" for Snow White and "R" for Rose Red and "B" for the bear they found in the woods. Jill did a beautiful "R" with a thorny red rose bush growing up through it. I made a hairy bear out of my "B".

After working in our notebooks we had a break. Everyone went to their wooden cubbyhole and got their blanket, while Mrs. Lecraw poured apple juice and opened a box of Graham crackers at the back counter. We spread our blankets and then went to the counter to get snacks. Suddenly it was darker in the room. A storm was almost on us. There was thunder and Mrs. Lecraw went to the classroom entrance and turned on the lights. We didn't have fluorescent lights in classrooms then, so the room was filled with a soft golden light. As it rained outside we listened to Mrs. Lecraw tell us about the play we would stage for our parents at the Thanksgiving Assembly. We would dramatize "Snow White and Rose Red" with Dickey as the evil dwarf and Jill as Rose Red. I was to play the bear prince. We would play music and have a chorus. As she talked we all forgot about the storm outside and just imagined the costumes and scary parts, like when the bear came and knocked at their door.

After the break we cleared our desks and Mrs. Lecraw distributed water color paper while we each got out three clear glass coasters from our desk and filled a glass with water. We dampened sponges in the glass to moisten the paper and press it flat to the desktops. Each of us received a dollop of yellow, blue and red water color paint pigment in our coasters.

We were to illustrate some chosen scene in the fairy tale. I chose the scene of the bear fighting the evil dwarf. With the brush we added a little water from the glass to each coaster. The pre-moistened paper took the water colors beautifully. It wasn't hard to mix the blue and yellow right on the paper to get a forest green for the trees. The brown for the bear was tricky. Fortunately the sponge could act as an eraser and reabsorb much of any mistake. Mrs. Lecraw had to help me mix the blue and yellow into some red paint to get just the brown I needed for my bear. As we worked I would look up once in a while to the large rain spattered windows and see the stormy sky. The more it raged outside, the more I felt the golden glow inside as we painted together.