Field Trip!

Friday, we went on my first ever field trip as a teacher. It was a trip to a planetarium which is remarkably only half an hour away from our school, at a local college. The trip itself went without a hitch, although the planetarium program itself could use some serious help -- it was alternately way over the children's heads and then way under them.

We took the whole first grade, which is about 70 students, in two school busses. The presenter, a professor, had limited English fluency. She would ask questions and the students would stare at her blankly. She showed a video that she and her department had made that starred two white preschoolers who went on an "adventure" to the solar system (they sat in a box in front of a green screen and flashed photos of the planets behind them.) Then she showed some constellations (the kids got a little rowdy in the dark) and then she took them outside to try to make them "orbit" like planets, which they tried really hard to do, but were basically unsuccessful. Then we went home.

But we took the kids somewhere, and now they have been to a planetarium and seen some big pictures of the planets, and gotten a little feeling, I think, for how far apart they are. And that's pretty cool.