Field Trip

The question I've been pondering all day: Is it wrong that the funnest activity I do with my class all year is also the least educational? I hope not, because there is no way I could make this field trip educational without stripping it of all fun and excitement.

I took my kids on our annual "Let's Find a Christmas Tree For Our Classroom" field trip today. As I walked to and from home at lunch, I was thinking, "Dang. I definitely could have picked a better day." It was cold, with a biting wind that dropped the wind chill to about 10 below zero. We were all prepared, though. I warned the kids yesterday that if they didn't bring the appropriate cold-weather gear today that I was going to leave them at school. Two kids were absent, so I only had 3 - that's the joy/bummer of only having 5 kids in the class. If two of them are gone, that's half the class!


Doris (the first-grade aide) and Rebecca (one-on-one aide for one of my students) and the class and I set out towards Airport road. It was so fun getting outside and watching the kids have fun. They were so cute with their rosy-cheeked grins and bubbling laughter. We actually ended up going down the snow-machine trail that Katie and I skied on last winter. We had a hard time finding a good tree. They were all looking pretty scraggly and brown. We finally found a decent one - actually it was two trees in one. It was heavy - too heavy for the kids to carry, so Rebecca and I hoisted it up onto our shoulders. Marvin walked behind me and "helped" us carry it. He's usually a real handful, but he was so eager to help out today. I guess he just needs a job to do, a way to feel helpful. The picture is us after we got the tree out of the woods and onto the road.

We only had to carry the bohemeth about halfway. Paul stopped in his truck and took it the rest of the way to the school. It was a challenge getting it inside the building - it was a tight squeeze getting it through the door! Of course, when we did get it inside, the trunk didn't exactly fit into the tree stand. So, Doris went down to the high school wing and got Bidoo to come help us out. Bidoo lives in a different village, but has relatives in Elim and is pretty much spending the year here working on carving projects with the older kids (he even did a small carving project with my kids, but that's a whole different story). Thankfully, he came down with one of the junior high kids and they shaved it down far enough to get it most of the way into the stand.

I only had 1 string of lights left, because I only have 6 strands of lights: 2 are up in our apartment, two are hanging in the classroom, and 1 strand doesn't exactly light up anymore. This is about a 3 strand tree. Hm. Well, with that string of lights and some decorations from the kids (read: paper snowflakes because that's all they know how to make), I think it'll be a pretty delightful tree.