Reindeer Ranch

Today was very successful field trip number two to Hardy's Reindeer Ranch. It is literally just 5 minutes outside of town and made for a perfect Kindergarten trip.

I have been hit by the 2nd round of sickness so I only had 13 kids at school go on the trip. The most I have had all week has been 14. On Monday between the 4 K classes, we had almost 20 kids out. Eeek! They are slowly coming back, but it's been a quiet week so far. I'm not really managing to stay very healthy with a stopped up nose, horrible cough, and a teensy bit of a sore throat that comes and goes (possibly due to the coughing) but no fever and I feel pretty good so I'm just toughing it out. Can't let the sickness win! Luckily though, the Champaign County Health Department is going to give the H1N1 vaccine out for free to all the students next week. I pretty sure that's not what is going around, but hopefully, that will keep us from even more sickness starting and spreading rampant through the classrooms.

Back on the topic, we got to take a short hayrack ride, feed the reindeer, pick out a pumpkin, play at the playground, eat a cookie, and take a quick jaunt through the corn maze. I was given the map with the highlighted shortcut through the maze and told to lead away. You almost got a story about how the first year teacher got 60 kids and 5 adults lost in the maze, but luckily I have a better sense of direction than my brothers and we made it out in record time with only one extra loop. I'm pretty sure no one else even knew we weren't exactly on the highlighted path. I only had one student terrified of the reindeer and she got much braver after seeing the other kids pet them. I'll have to check to see if there are any pictures without kids faces before I post anything. I might have a few possibilities but we'll see. It was a quick morning but just the right amount of time for the group. It was a noon dismissal day so by the time we got back we sat down, did calendar, read a story, and went home. Everyone was tired and worn out for sure. The best part for me was the following conversation:

Student: Are we in nowhere?

Me: Ha! No, we're not nowhere. We're somewhere. We're in the country.

Student: The country???

Me: Yeah. The country. We left the town of Rantoul and now we are in the country.

Student: We're really in the country?

Me: See? We're surrounded by fields and there aren't very many houses. This is called the country. Not the a city anymore but the country.

Student: Hmm. The country. . . .

I could really tell they were having a hard time getting that vocab but I tried my best to educate them on such things. But she sure was convinced that we were in "nowhere." I think I convinced her it was the country which is actually somewhere but perhaps I just made her even more confused. Oh well. I tried.