It wouldn't be a day off if we weren't taking the kids on a trip somewhere. My Mom bravely decided to come along with us.
As far as trips have gone with these kids, this one was pretty tame. We had about a 1:2 adult:student ratio, so we didn't really need to worry about how they were going to behave. We took them on a trip to Lancaster to eat at Bird in Hand and see Jonah at the Sight and Sound Theater.
Aside from the whole busload being fascinated at the site of cows and horses, there really wasn't that much that happened. The day was gorgeous and made for a nice trip through the country side. But the kids pointing out every animal made me wonder what it must be like to live in such a tiny, cramped city all the time and after less than an hour's short drive, see such wide open space and greenery. I also wondered what it would be like if it were say, your first time on such an outing. I think I'd be terrified at how much open space there was, and I'd certainly be mystified that cows really do exist.
Certainly the link between the animals and farms and the food that they see every day is confusing and hard to believe. As if to prove my point, one first grader sat across from me with his giant plate of food as we quizzed him on the contents of his plate.
"Where does ham come from, cow or pig?" asked one of the adults.
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
"Yes."
So, Mr. R asked him, "What about chicken, where does chicken come from?"
This one he had to think about for a second before he answered, "Umm, an egg I think."
Acing that question, Mr. R moved on to, "What about turkey? Where does turkey come from?"
"I think it would be, a rooster," he said.
Looks like the next unit we do will be on animal husbandry.
The show was fantastic and really beautifully done. I'm not sure if the younger of our students understood what was going on exactly, but they enjoyed the theatrics of the show, which included live animals, lots of moving sets, and tons of beautiful lights.
I sat next to a little five-year-old who had clearly eaten one too many Slush Puppies at lunch and talked incessantly through the whole show. This generally didn't bother me too much, and we had fun pointing out the jellyfish as they dropped from the ceiling during the underwater scene and all of the live animals on their way out. She insisted that the stars that lit up through the audience at the end of Act 1 were real. This got her so excited that she almost took a nose dive into the next row at one point and I pulled her back just in time.
Once, I thought the sugar rush was subsiding only to turn around and see her opening a juice packet. Once she had finished her juice she folded the packet in half and reached over me to my Mom and said, "Look! Look what I made!" In true motherly fashion, my Mom assumed she was giving her trash and serenely took the juice packet.
Two actors brought out a giant whale and floated him all around the theater. As the whale got closer the girl started getting more and more scared. "Don't come closer, whale! Go away!" But this was to no avail; the whale banked a hard right directly towards us. The girl gripped her seat in fear and started screaming, "This is not a fun trip! This is not a fun trip!"
Right around the point where Jonah's plant dies, Little Miss Sugar Rush asked me if it was almost over. I told her it was. In a matter of seconds, she was draped across my legs so asleep that when the show ended about five minutes later I couldn't wake her up.
And she wasn't the only one. We just managed to get the kids back to the bus before almost all of them slumped over into a deep sleep. One boy had fallen asleep with his head on his knees with his seatmate asleep leaning backwards over top. Ah, the sugar crash.
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