Field Trip

New Brighton

Hello,

Leroy and I arrived in DC just a day ahead of another field trip for Lexi’s class. This one was to the zoo, so we were quite pleased to be able to participate since we like zoos. Stephen’s parents were planning to go and they invited us to go along. Lexi was all concerned because she thought they might not want to have so many adults. After checking with her teacher, we went feeling quite necessary. Stephen’s father decided to stay home and help Sarah and Natalie.

Before we left the school, Leroy helped pack lunches for the children while Barb and I helped on the playground. For the trip itself, Leroy and I were assigned three girls as our responsibility while Barb was in charge of two others. This time we rode on the school bus.

The bad smell was noticeable on ascending the steps of the bus. Even though it was quite cool the “hatch” on the roof was open as was one window. This was really the slow bus to the zoo. When going up hill, I doubt that we went over 5 mph with a little more speed on the straight away. Barb said it took us 45-50 minutes to get there. At one point one of the teachers stood and said, “There is something wrong with the bus. The driver is going slowly hoping to save power. Another bus has been called, but we are planning to stay on this bus to the zoo if we can make it.”

We managed to get there and it was great to speed back in a different bus.

It is a trickier duty to chaperon three and four year olds in the zoo than in the building museum. Here in the wide open spaces with lots of hiding places, there was much more need to gather and count heads as at any moment a child could go off somewhere. We also found that two adults and three children might have been harder than one adult and two children. Our three girls did not all want to hold hands. It is that old formula about three people being a more difficult group than two, consequently it kept shifting as to how many and whose hands we were holding. I was a bit anxious that we would think the other adult was responsible for one of the girls and they would be gone. Luckily all children were accounted for at the end of the trip.

We saw the giant pandas, primates, and a new animal for us, the long nosed shrew.

Paula