Bowlin’, Bowlin’, Bowlin’

Nothing says “Field Trip” quite like an outing to the Bowling Alley. Not sure what exactly they were intending to teach the kids on this outing, but it sure wasn’t physics . My goodness, I feel lucky to have come out alive. I only got one ball dropped on my foot and that was courtesy of my own child.

Jack was up at the crack of dawn….he’s been waiting for field trip day and riding the School Bus all week. We had to drop Emilie off first today and at a slightly earlier time than normal. In my rush to get out the door I forgot my camera. All these photos are from the cell phone. They’re a bit grainy, but they’ll do.

 

In all honesty they did pretty well for a bunch of 5 year olds with heavy balls. The kids were divided up four to a lane with one ball for each lane and they were pretty good at taking turns. After the first few frames they had figured out which order they were bowling and things went fairly smoothly. Since the ball return was shared with another lane there were a couple scuffles over who got what color ball (Jack would only bowl with the green ball and would wait if it wasn’t available) but other than that all the kids got on pretty well.

I loved watching all the techniques. Granny bowling was popular, Jack tried kicking the ball once (only takes once to figure out that’s not a good idea), a few tried to emulate the proper technique of sliding one foot back behind you (this usually resulted in a trip and splat). A lot of them bowled like they were throwing a shot-put. It was quite exciting. The ball return was even more exciting and there were several reminders issues not to stick your hands, or head, down the return….

I did take a couple of videos, because the camera does that, and even managed to catch Jack bowling the worlds sloooowest ever spare. I think this is called dumb luck since there was no aiming whatsoever and it was pretty impressive that the ball even made it all the way down the lane without stopping.

The worlds slowest and most unintentional spare….

Field Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Monday was Jack’s first ever school field trip. The destination: Tubb’s Berry Farm and Pumpkin Patch. The day couldn’t have been nicer in a weather sense and, best of all, we got to ride the school bus!

I went along to help out, as did several other class moms. It ended up with each of us having about 3 kids to look after. I had Jack, Alyx, and Emilie. Yep, sister got to come along for the fun. She has no school on Monday and Jack’s teacher said it would be fine. Emilie has no problems at all keeping up with the big kids and they (the girls anyways) seem to look on her like some sort of sweet living doll. They want to help her do everything, and she more than takes advantage of their attention.

First stop once we got to the patch was the chance to pick out a pumpkin. If you could carry it, you could keep it. I though it would take longer, but most kids were into and out of the patch like it was a large orange-only Easter Egg hunt and you just grabbed the first gourd you saw. The patch owners, the Tubb family, must be aware of that because they had an assortment of animals for the kids to look at and pet while they waited to rotate to the next station.

 

 

 

 

Next was the little kids play area that had a slide, rubber ducky races, and a small hay bale maze. Really all that area needed was the slide. A couple of kids tried out the maze, but mostly they just went down the slide over and over and over and over.

After the play area they got a hayride. Jack was excited to tell everyone that it was a Kubota tractor pulling us. They hayride concluded at the best stop of all. The large bale maze and BIG slide! Let’s say this slide easily compares to those giant slides you ride with the burlap sack at the fair, except this one offers unlimited trips.  The kids had a blast seeing how many different ways they could go down. Even us moms all took a trip or three.

The only oversight in this whole trip was that I was the only person who though to bring a water bottle. The weather was pretty warm for October and the kids had been running around the whole time so it was no surprise they got thirsty. Emilie asked for some water and I got the bottle out to give her a sip next thing you know I had a whole line of  kids asking if they too could have a sip. Thankfully none of the Moms or kids were germaphobes. I mean, you can only rotate the container mouth so many times…..