Is It The Great Pumpkin?

AnnaLaura had her 1st school field trip!! Her Kindergarten class (and the other 3 Kindergarten classes at her school) piled onto a school bus and headed for Pahl's Pumpkin Patch. Should I mention that this was also her 1st bus ride (as I have posted earlier, her school does not have any bussing....so, her teacher actually had to "teach" her class about riding a bus)? With 4 classes (10-15 kids in each) and the teachers on the bus, there wasn't much room left. That meant that all us parents had to follow the bus on a 20 minute drive through the countryside (we were encouraged to carpool).

The kids each received a free pumpkin from the enormous "pick your own" pumpkin patch. Unfortunately it was a bit too close to Halloween and the pumpkin patch was rather over-picked. AnnaLaura absolutely refused to pick out a pumpkin with cries of, "I already have a pumpkin! I don't want another one!" So....I picked out a pumpkin (I paid $5 for this field trip, we're getting a &$#@ pumpkin!).

AnnaLaura and Abbey

As a chaperone I was responsible for watching 2 kids (the third didn't go to school that day), AnnaLaura and her friend Abbey. After they ate their snack we had some time to kill so they posed for me (see above). Afterward they ran around in circles like crazed chickens (I just hope they didn't scare the real chickens too much).

Feeding some cows

Up close with a horse

AnnaLaura has seen plenty of cows...No matter which direction we drive from our house, we pass a field filled with cows...But she's never been able to touch one before. She really enjoyed being able to feed and touch the calf, but she really liked petting the horse. Pahl's also had 2 goats, 2 pigs (small ones), a whole mess of chickens (some of which layed green eggs - which AnnaLaura is still laughing about), and some bunnies. While all of them were fenced in she was still able to touch most of them. She was even able to feed the chickens!

Hay-bale maze

Corn stalk maze

Pahl's had 3 mazes: a small corn maze (maize maze?), a large corn maze, and a hay-bale maze. First, we went through the small corn maze. Both AnnaLaura and Abbey were very excited to examine real ears of corn still on the stalk and touch the leaves. The next maze they ran through was the hay-bale maze (I didn't venture in, but took pictures instead). They ran and ran and ran...back and forth...over and over again...until they got bored. Then off to the big corn maze! The owners of the farm told us that there was an exit to the maze, but we never found it. We followed 2 other groups of parents and kids until we all became tired and lost and cold... and then we all cheated our way out. Something tells me that when people are on a time constraint of 15 minutes for 3 mazes they cheat..at least when trying to keep track of multiple 5 year olds.

We all had a lot of fun and everyone was accounted for when it was time to get on the bus. I made a quick run into town and put all my pictures on a CD for AnnaLaura's teacher. When I asked her later if the CD was satisfactory, she showed me the project she and another teacher were working on: they're putting together a coloring book for the kids where they can draw a picture of the corn maze (or seeing the animals, picking pumpkins, etc.) and up in the corner of the page will be one of my pictures. Wow! It feels great to be able to do things like that for AnnaLaura's class.

Mrs. Frusti's Kindergarten Class