Adventures in Field Tripping

Yesterday we took the 14 kids from work on a field to Clark Planetarium. We had 3 of us teachers and 2 moms so it was a very manageable group.

How did the kids feel about the feel trip?
Well, my favorite response is as follows: A boy walked in the entrance and in all sincerity said, "Oh, my..... Somebody pinch me!" As if on command the boy next to him reached out tweaked his arm! Fortunately, it didn't phase the "oh my" boy a bit!

We only spent about a 1/2 hour looking at exhibits. The main activities were 2 movies, "Planets" about kids in a cardboard rocket visiting all the planets (the power of imagination!) and "Deep Sea" in 3-D! I have never worn 3D glasses before and thought it was VERY cool.

Not to mention all the stuff I learned from the movies. For example.....

• Mercury has the shortest rotation around the sun, only 88 days
• The planets are divided into 2 groups: rocky midgets and gas giants
• The sun is so big that compared to earth- the sun is a tennis ball and earth is a grain of sand
• The trumpet triton fish has poor vision but it catches prey with the sense of smell
• Octopuses (Octopi?) can change to look like it's surroundings as it travels on the ocean floor
• When sea turtles shells get to caked with algae, they travel thousands of miles to get "cleaned" by smaller fish who eat the alage

OK, that's enough. But isn't it always fun to learn new things?

One final adventure: my lunch. I was under the impression that the school would provide field trip lunches for students AND for teachers. But I never asked (note to self for future reference) and Charlene (head teacher) forget to tell me I had to order a lunch.
So at the snack, I decided on a hot dog (mainly because I heard on "Biggest Loser" that high protein items are better at a snack bar setting- laugh if you want to, it's okay!) but ahead of me were about five kids, each with a handful of change painstakingly deciding how much they could buy and counting out their pennies. Very cute!

I decided that I would be back at school in 90 minutes (where I had snacks) and I didn't want a hot dog bad enough to wait any longer. But a few kids refused to touch parts of lunches so I ended up with an apple, string cheese and wrapped sandwich. Normally, I don't support taking food from kids but in this case.....