Our Field Trip to the Tennessee Aquarium

Last Friday, the day before our Thanksgiving holidays, we decided to take the fourth grade at our school on a field trip. We have roughly in the ballpark of 120 fourth grade students and four teachers. Last year we had five, but due to funding they moved one of the teachers to third. Two out of the four of use were out of town for the field trip which means we had substitute teachers for our field trip. I know doesn't that sound like a headache and a half. Luckily one of the subs was a previous fourth grade teacher at our school, so she was wonderful. The other one was actually a para pro at our school and she had the wild bunch. Fortunately she survived and I'm sure all the kids had a blast. If we would have ridden the escalator up and down all day they kids would have thought we were at Disney.

We are a Title I school, so we were actually able to get our field trip completely  FREE which is always nice. The aquarium we decided to go to is thirty minutes north of the town our school is located in. We left promptly at 8:40 after me having to hold the bus, so that one of my little blessings could get herself checked in and on the bus before we left her. She is a true blessing with a name life Nevaeh (yes, Heaven spelled backwards) how could you not be a blessing. After tending to her and telling her our class was waiting for her with baited breath to get on the bus we traveled to Chattanooga, TN. As we are on interstate 24 going around the ridge cut the students gasped on the bus at the sight of the city. I'm pretty sure most of them had never been out of Dalton and so the sight of the city skyline was what I image when I saw Manhattan for the first time.

After gathering my little ducklings we lined up and went in to first building, which is the freshwater building that houses all the creatures from streams, lakes and rivers a plenty. We spend time with the otters, seahorses, and even giant sea monsters known as sturgeons. Some of them were amazingly large. Next we went on to the salt water building where the kids were able to touch stings rays, butterflies and to see the amazing sights of the jelly fish and every other ocean sea creature. We also spent some time with the penguins, who are quite adorable. After touring both buildings we had our typical school sack lunches outside and rushed to make it to the IMAX theater. When we arrived at the IMAX theater we were ushered to our seats and given our funny looking glasses and sat down to see a movie about The Age of the Titan Ice Age where we learned about the great mammoth and saber tooth tiger. Afterwards, we loaded the bus and headed home. It made for a great day with the kiddos. I was very fortunate to have my aunt help me chaperon my bunch.