Overnight Field Trip

This week Ashlyn and I had the chance to help chaperon Blake's TAG field trip...pretty nerdy group of kids if I do say so myself. I love that Blake's Chinese teacher isn't much taller than him and is trying to crick her neck around him to be seen in the picture.Our first stop was to a BEAUTIFUL park for a picnic lunch...considering it was only in the low 40's that day, picnicking was the LAST thing I wanted to be doing. However, the park was huge and had all kinds of hiking trails and a pretty creek through it so we ended up having a good time. I don't know what it is with kids, rocks and water, but we couldn't keep them out of the creek and figured a little water wouldn't hurt if they fell in.Then we loaded back on the school bus and went to Science Works, a hands on science activity museum. This was Blake's favorite exhibit - Harry Potter's Levitating Challenge. You had to maneuver the styrofoam ball through the obstacle course using a blast of air controled by levers to make it blow harder and move it left to right. He was the only one of the kids in our group that was able to make it all the way through.
This was my favorite, we sat for more than a half hour playing with it! The object was to get the metal discs spinning on the spinning turn table. There were a couple of dads that sat with me for a long time trying our darnedest to get them all spinning at once but we never figured it out.Then it was it was off to Home Town Buffet for dinner, yummy! Next we headed to the school we were sleeping at and got to use a telescope to see Jupiter.

And then we had an Astronomy teacher hook us up with NASA to collect some data about the heat on Jupiter for a study NASA has been working on. Via the internet we were able to do a teleconference with NASA and control a satellite in California to collect the data they needed. Blake was the scribe that put the data on the form to fax to NASA and loved every minute of it...after about 20 minutes Ashlyn and I went down the hall and got ready for bed. Blake worked on it for two hours though with the other kids.The next morning we met up with their Chinese teacher and attended a Chinese New Year festival complete with a parade...
Face painting...gotta have Cherry Blossoms for a Chinese New Year Festival!

And lastly we attended a REALLY long dragon dance show...we're talking 1 1/2 hours and they only danced 4 songs! The rest was all talking, BORING! Blake was excited that he was chosen to go up and participate in one of the dances and help control the dragon.
Day one of the field trip was pretty fun, but day two we could've done without. It was frustrating that there was soooo much unplanned down time to keep so many kids occupied for.