2nd Grade Field Trip

Last week and this week are going to be packed with activities. I think we were out every night last week and we're coming up on another week of the same. The good news is, it should slow down after that. So we should be able to slide into the last two weeks of school. But Friday is the Ice Cream Social in addition to everything else, so we'll have some late nights.

Last Wednesday was Peter's class field trip. I even let Grady skip preschool to go with us. We could have ridden the bus with the class, but I had grocery shopping to do afterwards. As a reward for driving my car, I ended up with a $15 parking ticket for parking in a 2-hour zone.

The 2nd graders went to the Nevada State Museum. They got to learn about Native Americans in the Carson area, gold mining and early Nevada history, and butterflies. I was surprised by how well everyone did (including Grady), sitting and listening for roughly three hours.

We ended up in groups of 10 kids, with a couple parents in each group. Peter's group went to see the Native American exhibit first. They heard about where they found food, what they made, where they lived and some of their school experiences. I thought it was all pretty fascinating. The docent showed the kids lots of baskets and woven things, rabbit skins, beads and shells...and...a piece of obsidian. A couple of the boys started a huge argument between themselves about the properties of obsidian and how it's made... because Minecraft. They didn't care about the specifics of what the Native Americans used the obsidian for, they just wanted to argue about it's various Minecraft uses.

The kids got a 10 minute break in the outdoor area before heading back inside to check out the early Nevada history. We walked through the ghost town and all the kids freaked out about ghosts and "oh my gosh, that window shade just moved". The docent kept telling them over and over that there weren't any ghosts, but the kids were too absorbed in the curtain flutters.

We walked through the mine to see what people used to do in Nevada. There were a couple buttons to be pushed. The first one was for a stamp mill sound and all the kids plugged their ears. The second one was just to turn some lights off, but the kids still plugged their ears. The docent told them it wouldn't be noisy and a couple of them said "I know, but I'm just covering my ears just in case".

They told us about the dangers of abandoned mines and had part of the mine display showing what an abandoned mine looks like. She warned everyone to stay out and said that they can have bad air inside and once she saw a dead bat right outside the mine so she knew it wasn't safe. The docent in the Nevada history section was all about the dead stuff. The kids loved it and kept asking questions about every dead thing they could think of.

She stopped us before one display and says "you know we live in the desert and it's important to have shelter and lots of water. I'm going to show you a real cat that got stuck outside and didn't have enough water". Yep, a desiccated cat for our viewing pleasure. The kids were morbidly fascinated.

We moved on to an exhibit with a horse. Kids: Is that horse alive?
Docent: Nope, but it used to be. After it died, someone stuffed it and brought it here.

She showed us the oldest pair of Levi's in Nevada. Docent: These overalls were from a 5 year old boy who died of scarlet fever.
Kids: What's scarlet fever?
Docent: Well, it's an illness with a rash and other stuff. I had it when I was little, but I didn't die.
Grady (tugging at his shirt): I have a rash and I'm 5 years old.
Other kids: I have a rash too.

So, there was a lot of dead in our second exhibit. I swear every couple words during that hour, someone used the word dead. She also showed us some older items like a spittoon and an old iron. She passed around the iron and I swear every kid tried to see how high they could lift it with one hand. I kept freaking out that someone was going to drop it on a head or something.

We had a lunch break on the grass and tried to keep the kids mostly corralled. There was running and rolling and cartwheels until too many kids got hurt. Peter sat with his friend and Grady sat with me. We had a nice time flicking ants off the lunch stuff and sitting in the sun.

Finally, we saw the section on butterflies. The kids got to do a craft, hear a story, and check out butterflies under a microscope. It was all relevant to the kids' school curriculum because their own caterpillars are just starting to spin their chrysallises. It was really nice to do butterflies last. All the kids in our group left with the idea that this was the best trip ever because they got to do a craft. Grady got into the butterfly project just as much as the 2nd graders. Once the kids got back to the school, there was a lot of playing with the butterflies during recess.

Peter said it was a really fun field trip. Grady says he liked it too. I don't remember if either of them wanted to go back to the museum. I think they only saw about half of the exhibits. The kids only get one field trip per grade, so that's it for 2nd grade. Next year, each of the boys will probably have separate field trips and it'll be the first year that I don't have to worry about bringing an extra kid with me when I help out.