Field Trips Galore!!

The end of April was field trip time for the kids. Connor goes on one field trip a month with all the kids in the North Metro program (autistic kids) of the elementary school. They do things like go to the movies, the mall and eat at the food court, bowling, indoor swimming, Ci Ci's pizza along with Walmart and Dollar Tree, things like that. A lot of autistic kids have problems with going places so there field trips are centered around taking them out in the community to everyday places. Luckily, Connor doesn't have a problem with that he just follows along. Talmage has gone on about 6 field trips this year. He went to a pumpkin patch, the train store which they walked to since it was next to his school, the park, an elementary school, Publix grocery store across the street, and a fire station. Payton, Brenton, and Kennedy only got to go on one field trip and they were one right after the other. On April 29, Brenton went to the GA Aquarium. The next day Kennedy went to the GA Aquarium and the day after that May 1st Payton went to Fernbank Natural History Museum (ya know the ones with the dinosaurs and lots of other stuffed dead animals). Payton was kind of sad that she didn't get to go the the aquarium because she has never gone before and is now the only one in our family that hasn't been. A few years back we had annual passes to Fernbank. I wish they were a little more spread out because I had to hand over $57.25 for all three of their field trips to cover cost of the bus, the ticket for the museum, and extra $$ for those who couldn't afford or didn't pay. Because on the field trip form it says that the payment is optional but if they don't get enough people to pay it would be cancelled. I felt better handing over that kind of $$ knowing they were going to cool places. But the best part of all those field trips is that I got to go with Brenton and half of the 6th graders to chaperon. I guess the 6th graders are divided into 2 teams. One team went to the aquarium and the other team went to Fernbank. I'm glad Brenton's team was the one that went to the aquarium because Brenton has never been before. I could have gone to the aquarium the next day too with Kennedy's class but I had a meeting with Connor's new school that he is going to next year (he will be in 6th grade Middle School next year).

We left at 8:45 am from the middle school on school buses. Besides riding in a small circle in the elementary school parking lot on Kindergarten preview with each of my kids I don't remember the last time I was on a bus for more than 2 minutes. Each chaperon had either 5 boys or 5 girls in their group. I had 5 boys in my group of course Brenton being one of them. Here they all are next to Deepo (Neemo wanna be). Not sure who the girl is but didn't feel like cropping her out.

The aquarium is divided into 5 areas. Each of the kids were given a clip board and a sheet to answer questions on one of the 5 areas. We saw everything from Whale sharks, to sharks, to beluga's, otters, crabs, sting rays, turtles, fish of course, jelly fish basically if it swims we probably saw it. They don't have the seals anymore they are replacing them with a huge dolphin aquarium that they are building right now and we couldn't see the penguins because they are next to the future dolphin exhibit so it was blocked off. We even got to touch a few thing. We touched little sharks (rubbery), sting rays (smooth), starfish, and sea anemones

I had a real great time. I was a little nervous about having a group full of boys. Those boys were very well behaved and they all stuck together and listened and waited patiently while others had to look for answers and fill out their sheet. I had a great time. Oh and I forgot to mention chaperons were FREE so I didn't have to fork over even more $$ than I already had for the 3 field trips.