Kylie's first field trip

It was a beautiful fall morning and a little girl was quite beside herself with excitement over her first field trip...

Pay no mind to the "run by drumming" from little brother who just can't stand it when the camera isn't focused on him! By the way, that is Kylie's very special hippo that Ian and I sent to her while she was still in China. She has recently rediscovered it and LOVES to carry it around.

We arrived at our location and suddenly my little chatterbox went silent as she assessed the situation. (The three and four year old classes were included on the trip, so she was trying to decide what she thought of it all).

Getting her bearings about her while scanning the crowd.

But getting started with the program restored her confidence (and finding her blond haired friend ~ the one she always points out is "the only kid in class taller than me, but we play together nice-lee"). The focus of this month is "I can discover autumn" and trees were the educational focus of the field trip. Miss Jennifer (the nature center educator) had them start by planting their feet and then she waved her magic wand and they all became trees. Amazing how a magic wand stick gets a group of unruly three and four year olds to stand still...

My sweet little tree planted next to her buddy.

While trees they played a game to learn about the three things a tree needs to grow. Dirt, water, and sunlight were represented with appropriate color craft sticks and Miss Jennifer would call out, "I'm thirsty!" or "My roots need a place to hide." or "I'm cold, I need to be warmer." and the kids would have to decide what stick represented the solution to the need.

"Dirt holds the roots!"

Thankfully the magic stick wand worked the other way and Miss Jennifer was able to turn the little trees back into children. Then we went on a leaf search. Miss Jennifer put on her leaf necklace and showed the kids different shapes of leaves. Then she'd hold one of the shapes up and ask each child to find a leaf of that type. You've never heard such delighted squeals as children searched fallen leaves for a particular shape!

"Does this match the dog ear shape?"

Kylie took her search very seriously and wanted to find "a just right leaf" for each example.

"Here is a REALLY good one!"

Then we finished up at the playground for lunch and playtime. The educational portion was perfectly geared for little tykes, the weather was beautiful, and sharing it with my girlie was superb!