Field Tripping

Today was the big day - our first Literacy Launchpad field trip!! I would like to say a BIG THANKS to all the families who came out and joined me and Reid. I had a lot of fun. I hope everybody else did too. And the best part was getting to meet some of you, parents. That was really great for me, and I'm hoping that I'll get to see you guys some more in the future (the wheels are already turning for the next Literacy Launchpad field trip). I'm also hoping that I'll get to meet more parents. I know Saturdays are tough for many families because there's soccer and all sorts of things going on. Plus, our trip today was way up in Nashville, which is quite a haul for some families. Thank you especially to those of you who drove from far away to come today.

This whole idea of field tripping came from a friend, Bryn. I was telling her that I wished that I could meet more of the parents of my students, and she had the brilliant idea of planning periodic field trips. Thanks, Bryn!

Today's field trip was pretty brief. We met up, entered Cheekwood as a caravan, made a potty stop, then found Reid and read him a story. The parents and kids then had time to explore the gardens and the other scarecrows, which was nice. But I wish our time together had maybe been a little longer. Especially since some of the families drove so far to come.

Ideally I would like these field trips to be a chance for parents to do something fun and literary with their child, meet-up with me, and also meet each other. So hopefully the next field trip will allow us some more time to chat and make some new friends.

I have to say, story time at Cheekwood was a challenge today. being outdoors offers many distractions, and I worried I wasn't reading loud enough for my voice to carry to everyone. I also wished we had been able to discuss the story a little bit when I was finished reading (like we usually do in class), but we were all somewhat spread out and the kids were anxious to get up and go see the other scarecrows. So again, we'll see if we can work that out on the next field trip.

I was so glad to see some other, non-Literacy Launchpad families stop by as we were reading and listen too! They were honorary class members for the day! How fun!

Roughly 10% of my students were there today for the field trip. It was a good size group for my first venture of this sort, but I would love to see more families come out for our next trip. I'll try to plan our next field trip at a more central location, which will hopefully make it more convenient for people. So if you're reading this, and you weren't there today... We missed ya! Come on out for the next trip!

Here are some photos from today's trip! Man, I love my job!!