My Adventure at the Farm

Last week I spent four days at a farm. With sixteen five year olds. And it was actually pretty fun!

Every year the five year old class goes on this trip, and usually the teacher takes her student teacher with her. But this year she didn't have one, so they asked me to join them, and I said yes.

As the trip approached, I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. When I told one of my tutoring families where I was going, she told me to get lots of sleep the night before we left. I began to think that I was more stressed about this trip than the kids were. I'd never spent more than six hours in a row with kids before, how was I going to deal with them 24hrs a day for four days straight?

This attractive picture was taken on the second last day. And I'm kind of smiling, right?

Monday morning, I arrived a the school to be greeted by a handful of kids running around the garden, with their little rolly suitcases lined up by the gate. As more and more kids arrived, they got more and more excited. Eventually we all loaded into the cars, and a couple of parents drove us to the train station at Montparnasse. We quickly got them settled on the train, and before I knew it, we were off. A one hour TGV ride brought us to Poitiers, where we had a very stressful 3 minutes to unload 16 kids and 18 suitcases. That done, we found our coach that would take us on the last leg of the journey, one more hour to the Centre de Plein Air de Lathus.

After the kids settled into the rooms, we were off to the farm, just a short walk away. The next three days were filled with activites like milking goats, riding ponies, fishing for tadpoles and making bread. The days passed quickly, with the time before dinner spent getting the kids cleaned up and into pyjamas, and the time after dinner spent trying to get them to sleep. Of the sixteen, only two had trouble getting to sleep, and well, luckily there were two of us.

Our bus picked us up on Thursday afternoon, and we loaded 16 tired and dirty kids and set off for the station.

I think the best part of the trip (aside from the fabulous weather that made me wonder how I can stand living in grey, grey Paris) was watching the kids see their parents for the first time as we got off the train.

And I slept for ten long hours on Thursday night. Thank goodness it was a holiday on Friday.