Dino Fun

Today we took the first grade on a field trip to the Dinosaur Park. It was fun, exhausting, and nothing went too terribly wrong.

The day started out a little off when one of my students (whose mom had signed the note indicating that she would be a volunteer that day) came to school and said "My mom isn't coming. She had to go to work this morning." I counted my blessings considering the teacher next door had a mom cancel her commitment to go because she was put in jail.

I still had 2 volunteers and so I was able to put my class into 3 groups: one group of 5 and two groups of 6. I have 17 kids in my class. I know. You're all jealous. And I can do math, too. Soooo jealous.

I gave myself the group of 5. Not because I wanted an easier group, but because I gave myself the infamous "Sam." I'd like to say, first off, that I didn't lose Sam at the park. I'll leave it at that for the moment.

After the business of getting ready (getting the kids to eat their breakfast quickly, making sure they brought their hats, finding out who brought a home lunch, getting the lunch count to the lunch ladies, loading the lunches on the bus, getting a final head count of adults, getting a check from the office for our admission, giving instructions to the volunteers, loading the kids on the bus, going over the rules for the bus "NO part of your body should hang out the window..." and making sure they were all settled in) we drove to the park.

When you're a kid and you're outside of school, in a bus, with your class, everything is cool.

"Look, teacher! An American flag!"

"Coool! McDonald's!"

"Look out the window, teacher! Dirt!"

And when you turn street corners on a bus, you must yell. You MUST.

Once at the park, I took my group of 5 boys and we started looking at everything. There was SO. MUCH. TO. SEE!!!! The boys didn't spend more than 2 seconds in one spot. They didn't stop talking about what they were looking at. They were running most of the time. It was a blast.

Here's a rare shot of them standing still.

Here's what they looked like most of the time.

Here's what caught their attention for a full 15 minutes. They stayed in the same spot!

After lunch in the "Dino Den", I let them play on the playground for awhile. It's a pretty cool playground. It has a gigantic tree they can climb in and then slide out of. It has a lot of dinosaurs that the kids can climb on. And there's a brachiasaurus you walk under to get to the playground. After about 10 minutes I had to round them up for our "educational presentation" in the Education Building. I counted 4 kids. Where was Sam? I had told him not to leave the playground area. He had nodded that he understood and said "okay". Yet, he wasn't there. I finally found him about 10 minutes later. He was not in the playground area.

"Sam, I asked you to stay in the playground area."
"I know."
"Then why did you leave?"
"I wanted to see the ducks."
I could not reason with him past that fact.
Aaaand that's why I had Sam in my group.

After we got back to school and after we ran through a dress rehearsal for our opera (a whole nother story), I put on "The Land Before Time" and enjoyed an hour of peace and rest.

Except when Sam got hungry.
"Teacher, I'm hungry."
"Really? When you get home be sure and have a snack."
"I'm really hungry right now."
"I see. Well, we don't have any food right here. You'll have to eat when you get home."
"I was really wishing we had two lunches today."
"That's too bad. We only had one today."
"And I'm really hungry."
"Sam. I don't have any food."

He finally turned around and went back to the movie.
I'm going to miss him over the summer.