a field trip to the zoo...

G loves field trips.  Obviously they mean a day away from normal classroom work and getting to go out to some place fun with your friends/classmates.  But G has one other big reason for loving field trips...she gets to ride on a bus!  She is pretty jealous of the kids at school that get to ride a bus (our district does not bus to Calvin) and actually asked me if we could move so that she could ride the bus too!  There are 6 scheduled field trips during the school year and parents are encouraged to help with at least one.  Fun for the child to have mom or dad along, and help for the teachers too.  Being that W and C are so small yet though, figuring out logistics for one of us to be able to go on a field trip was harder than we thought.  But we called in Aahma B (thanks so much!) to help us out and watch the boys for a day so I could go along with G's class to the MN zoo in March.  This is one of two trips they get to take to the MN zoo!  There is just too much there to do all in one day.  So this month's trip focused on the aquatic, coral reef and tropical rain forest exhibits as that was the big unit that the kindergarteners were doing this month.  There were 2 teachers and 3 moms along, so we each got a group of 4 students.  Our groups had to stay together, but we didn't have to travel with the rest of the class so that each group could go at the pace and interest of the students in there (one group buzzed through everything twice, one group stayed in the rain forest exhibit almost the whole time).  Mrs. B likes to group the kids so that each student has a friend or someone they are comfortable with as to make things easier for everyone throughout the day.  So my group had G, 2 of her really good friends, and another sweet girl.  We went through the rain forest exhibit, got to watch the feeding of the tropical fish in the big simulated coral reef exhibit, saw the very cool live coral reef, ate our lunch by the monkeys, got to see the sharks and sting rays being fed, and of course checked in with the dolphins (they aren't doing a show, but we did see them swimming around).  Everyone had a great time!