Saturday, June 06, 2009
Dom's Nursery Field Trip
4-JUNE-2009:
It was a Thursday and Dominic's nursery had organized a trip to a mobile farm which was set up in another branch of the nursery. Parents were welcome to come along. The children would walk to the Tube station, take a train (2 stops away), take a short walk to the bus stop, take a bus and then another short walk to the destination. This was the first time Dom had gone on a school trip via public transport. I overheard that there was one parent who didn't give permission to her child to travel by public transport and I don't know what they did to that child. I was concerned about safety too since the children would need walk along busy streets, cross the road and so on ... which is why I went along.
I sent Dominic to the nursery at 8:45am, came home, marinated the pork that I was going to cook that night, went to the supermarket to pack my lunch (because I didn't want to eat the children's food and also because I wasn't sure if there would be enough food for me as well) and went back to the nursery at 9:45am. We were supposed to leave at 10am. I kept myself out of Dom's sight while the teachers prepared the children. First, attendance was taken and then there was a prep talk on how they must behave themselves, how they must stop and look before crossing the road, how they must wait for the other passengers to get off the train first before getting on it, how they mustn't play at the bus stop, etc, etc. After that, all the children took a pee. The children were assigned to an adult - 1 teacher to 2 children and those whose mums were around were assigned to their mums (if mum lost her child, it would be her own fault. Heh!)
And so we walked, in a queue, to the train station. When we reached the destination train station, another attendance was taken to ensure that nobody was missing. No one was missing, so off we marched to the bus stop. It was havoc on the bus. The adults were chatting and the children were screaming 'Wheels on the bus' at the top of their lungs. It took forever for everyone to get on the bus and even longer than forever for everyone to get off it, since we all sat on the top deck of the double decker bus.
When we finally got to the farm, I was even more excited that Dom because I hadn't expected to see baby animals! The little piglets were so tiny that you could actually pick them up in your arms. And the billy goats were the size of a rooster (a big rooster that is). It was so nice to see the children stroking, holding and playing with the animals. Unfortunately, Dom wasn't that enthusiastic because he was a little bit afraid. He wouldn't hold a rabbit in his arms (because according to him, they scratch) and he wouldn't let a tiny chick perch on his arm. Nevertheless, he enjoyed watching and stroking.
At around 12pm, the children had a picnic lunch. I had packed myself a sandwich and a banana. As for the children, they were served sandwiches and pizza. Dominic had half a sandwich and then he filled himself up with cookies, tit bits and ice-cream.
After lunch, the children gathered round to sing a few songs. By then, most of them were very tired and one girl actually fell asleep while sitting on the floor. One or two of them had started throwing tantrums. Fortunately, Dom behaved well, except that he wouldn't let me out of his sight. We made our way back at around 1:30pm. By the time I dropped Dom off at his nursery, it was almost 2:30pm and I was extremely sleepy. I came straight home and took a nap and picked Dom up from the nursery at 5:30pm as usual.
Photo below shows the delegates at the Tube station, waiting for some of the parents to load up their travel cards.
Here, we were marching towards our destination. The children had stickers on their backs in case they get lost.
They found something here ...
They thought they found eggs!
