Field Trip To The Zoo (what was I thinking?)

Now that Sara is in kindergarten, I have been so excited for her to get the chance to go on field trips. Fall passed, as did winter, and the end of the school year was fast approaching with still no field trip. Then a note came home: field trip to the zoo, need volunteers!! I was so on that. I was never gonna miss my kid's first field trip and first ride on the school bus. So I quick told the teacher, "ME, ME, ME!!! I wanna be a volunteer and help watch the kids." (Nuts, I tell you, nuts.)

When the day arrived, Sara and I packed lunches and ran to the school. I learned that I would be in charge of a group of 5 kids from her class. No biggie. We got on the bus. (Oh, did I mention that ALL the kindergarteners were going to the zoo? ALL the morning classes and ALL the afternoon classes? That's a lot of 5 and 6-year-olds.) The bus. I had fogotten how loud the school bus can be. Before the bus ever left the parking lot the kids were yelling, "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! Blastoff!!! Ten, nine, eight ... It was a long ride to the zoo.

When we finally arrived, there were kids everywhere. I had to get my group as far away from the other kids as soon as possible because I knew I would lose them in the sea of small-folk. We ran from exhibit to exhibit, barely looking at any animal. I had 2 runners in my group who would just look at something for half a second and then take off before I had a chance to tell the others what kind of animal we were looking at. We ran from the giraffs to the hippos to the elephants. Then we had lunch. Lunch was good--no incidents. Then more running.

Somehow, we got to the small animal house when it was pretty empty. A zookeeper noticed our group and asked if the kids wanted to feed the birds. So they got to carry these big food dishes into the middle of the tropical junglely place, in the center of the building, and go behind the gate to feed the birds. Way cool. If there were a contest, my kids would win for coolest thing done at the zoo.

Pretty soon, time was up. Time to get back to the bus. The ride back to the school was considerably more quiet. Some kids even fell asleep. At the school I talked to several other volunteer moms who were just as worn out as I was. They all said the same thing: "This was a lot harder then I thought it would be."

Smiling at mom.

Feeding the birds.

Looking for snakes.



Climbing at the playground.

Later that night, at dinner, Sara exclaimed, "This was the best day of school ever! NO LEARNING!!!!!"