In March I volunteered to be chaperon for Stella's class trip to the Brooklyn Museum. I just wanted to ride on a yellow school bus!The trip was not scheduled to depart until about 10 or 10:30, but I decided to hang around after I dropped off Stella at school. This allowed me to get a glimpse of what happens in "morning meeting time".
MMT consisted of lots of questions, lots of statements (such as "I have a toy race car and it goes really fast.") and more than a handful of requests for the kids to sit down and stop interrupting each other. It was very cute though. Every few minutes Stella would stand up, walk over to me in the back of the room, and give me a hug. Then she would quietly go back to the meeting. At one point, she got up, cleaned up some drawing supplies, and then sat down again. That resulted in praise from Ms. Cassens for being so responsible.
I noticed that throughout the meeting a boy named Henry was eyeballing me. Curiosity finally got the best of him and he raised his hand to ask a question. "What is Stella's dad doing here?", he asked. Ms. Cassens explained that I was chaperoning the field trip. Henry's hand shot up again. "What does chaperone mean?"
Playground time followed morning meeting. Then it was time to get on the bus.
The 18 kids, two teachers, and five parent chaperones loaded onto the bus. There was much discussion about who was going to sit where. By this time I had adopted Hazel who preferred to hang out with me even though her own grandmother was one of the chaperones. I managed to convince Hazel that I needed to sit next to Stella (who would have had a heart attack if I didn't).
After several dozen stanzas of "Wheels On The Bus", we were there.
The group settled into a circle in the lobby of the museum as museum tour guide, Kristin, filled them in on what they were going to see. Stella leaned over to me and confessed that she loved Kristin (who she had met the day before during her visit to Stella's classroom).
We were then off and running (not literally) to look at three pieces. At each stop Kristin asked the kids what they saw and encouraged them to get involved with the art (short of actually touching it). She handed them samples of the material used to make the pieces. She had them draw what they were seeing. And she asked them questions about what they thought the artist was thinking.
Hazel and Stella made up my group of two kids. It was hard to tell at any given time which kid was my kid given how attached to me Hazel was.
At one point, while walking from one exhibit to the other, we passed through an area that had artwork featuring some nudity. Our pace quickened and I tried to distract. But just as we were leaving the "nude zone", Hazel opined that "Nudity is unacceptable".
By a little after noon the kids were showing signs of fatigue. Interest was waning. Time to get back on the bus... and quick!
Hazel still insisted on sitting next to me, but I had to disappoint her. That appeared to really piss her off and she refused to speak with anyone for the entire ride home. If you look at the photo above, you see that Hazel is the only kid facing the wrong way.
After a tearful goodbye (as usual) it was time for daddy to head off to work.
If you want to see all of the photos from the field trip, click here.
