Garden Goodness!

Once a month we go on a field trip with the kindergarteners at our school.  This week we went to a botanical garden.  We piled the kids into two vans and drove 30 minutes or so to a garden in the country run by a university.

Clayton's homeroom on the way to the garden.

Getting all the kids in one place is, as our favorite PU prof would say, like herding cats. However, their interest and attention span seems to increase exponentially when on a field trip.  A future study, perhaps?

The entrance to the garden.

The garden was lacking in flowers.  We both agree that we visited the garden a few weeks too early.  Had we waited, I think there would have been many more flowers blooming. But, it was a warm enough day, and the children enjoyed it anyway.

We call this girl the "Informer." At any given moment, she will to rush to the teacher's room, giggling and speaking so fast that the Korean teachers can't even understand her, and then run away.  She's like five kids packed into one.

How they say Root around the world!

After looking at flowers, they brought the kids to catch tadpoles! This is a right of passage as a child, if you ask me.  There were quite a few tadpoles for them to catch and release. There were also dragonfly nymphs to hold and observe.  We had never seen a dragonfly in that form before, and they were really cool. They come complete with detachable jaws!

We were a bit worried that one of the kids would take a swim. Luckily there was no need to revive the lifeguard skills.

After the tadpole expedition, they gave the kids capes with pictures of different insects on the back, and had them pretend to be bugs (super bugs, perhaps?).

After saying some things we didn't understand, the ladies who work at the garden made Clayton wear this sweet bird hat and chase the super bugs around the deck, trying to eat them.  

One of the perks of Clayton being the token male working with the kindies is that he gets roped into wearing the silly hats, and I do not. Instead, I get to take pictures for the world to see. Tee hee.