Field Trip to Boyert's Farm

Back on October 9th, I went with Bennett on his first Kindergarten field trip. We loaded up a few vehicles with kids and chaperones, and off we went to Medina to Boyert's, which is a family farm that provides an educational experience for local kids.

After a car-ride full of the antics of three, 5 year old boys (I was very amused), our first activity was a ride on the straw wagon. The children were adament that it was NOT a hay-ride. Hay is green not yellow, they had learned. So this was obviously a straw-ride. Duh.

As a sidenote, all the adults on the ride were truly afraid we were going to get stuck in the mud and have to bail out. It had been raining for the last several days, was sort of drizzly that day, and the ground was like dirt-soup.

 

Bennett and friends Mia and Alex:

 

B with Cooper and Alex:

 

Our ride's destination was a pumpkin patch, and Ben was the LAST child to pick out his pumpkin and get back on the wagon. Contrary to popular belief, not all little boys like dirt. Ben despises being dirty, and before you assume, I swear I did not create that in him. Other kids were trudging on through the mud, while Ben looked rather horrified by the prospect of getting a speck of dirt on him. One little girl came up to him and said, "Hey Ben, I dare you to kick in that rotten pumpkin." He looked at her with disgust and said, "No way. My boot would get dirty. That's so gross." HA!! He didn't want to touch a pumpkin if it had dirt/mud on it. Finding a non-grody pumpkin was a rather tall order under the circumstances, but I eventually found one he approved of.

 

Happy to be out of the mud, and back on the ride...

 

...and even happier that Mrs. Williams (his teacher) had the forethought to bring plastic bags for the kids' pumpkins. Now he could hold it without getting dirty.

 

We stowed our pumpkins back in the cars, and then we were off to see the farm animals. There was a mama pig with her piglets, and the kids got to see them eat. The mama pig came over to see Ben, which he was both nervous and excited about. When I took this, he was saying, "I want to touch her, but I'm scared!"

 

His teacher and I encouraged him, and he braved touching her with one finger. Mrs. Williams told him he showed courage, and he was so proud of himself. He mentioned to me later in the day that he "had a lot of courage for touching that pig." :-)

 

We also visited some cows (the kids were both perplexed and weirded out when the guide told them that their hamburger was once a cow), and rabbits.

After that, we went through a smaller pumpkin patch that grew those giant pumpkins you see in the "biggest pumpkin ever" contests on TV. The kids loved climbing on them, sliding off them, and standing on top of them. Good fun.

 

Learning about where milk comes from, and what products you can make from milk.

 

Learning about corn and its byproducts.

 

Mrs. Dragovich, the Kindergarten aide, helped B feed the goats some dried corn.

 

The kids lined up to learn about the birds on the farm - peacocks, chickens (meat and egg), and turkeys.

 

 

Checkin' out the turkeys.

 

We were lucky, because that morning, chicks were hatching. This really captured Bennett's attention, and he didn't want to leave. He and I hung back to watch the little baby chicks totter around, while the group moved on to look at all the "meat" chickens. I was happy about that. Chickens stink, in case you didn't know.

 

 

 

 

Sts. Peter and Paul Kindergarten class of 2009-2010! (minus one kiddo who was on vacation.)

 

Ben and Alex with a slobbery dog, who begged while we ate our lunch. One of the other moms had brought her 15 month old in her stroller, and this giant animal slurped Cheerios right off of her tray. Blech.

 

Mia, Bennett, Cecelia, and Lily.

 

Alex and Ben, with yet another slobbery dog in the maze. He was also a culprit in the Cherrio incident.

 

Each of the kids got a turn trying to rope cattle! Bennett almost got it this time!

 

Bennett played in dried corn with Cooper...

 

...and Trevor and Jacob.

 

The very last thing we did was play a game of tic-tac-toe, boys v. girls. To earn an "x" or an "o", the teams had to answer questions about what they had learned. Neither group missed a question, and they were very strategic with their "x/o" placement, so it ended up being a "cat game". Just goes to show you what little smarties these kids are. :-)