My class had a field trip on Friday to this great place. We don’t get to go every year, but have been many times. Each year it is bigger and better. We teach a dinosaur unit and this is the culmination. They have a new whale on exhibit that feels magical to look up at, surrounded by second graders. It is an age where the questions flow as easy as the answers about who the whale was, where it lived, and how small it makes us feel:

We had an appointment at the insect lab. Some of my students couldn’t get enough of the rats.

After a morning indoors and lunch on the grass, we went to the gardens out back. The kids just ran around like they never get to do at school. This makes me smile big, just to have them run and laugh and act silly.

This area is called the “get dirty zone” where the students looked in compost bins for worms. The weather was amazing and I felt lucky to be there.