Prep's day on the farm!

One of the highlights of Eli's first year at school was the Prep excursion to a farm. The kids were so excited that they could have gone anywhere (and to just watch the grass grow) and they still would have loved it. I made sure that I arranged my work schedule to enable me to go along too (I would have skipped it if it was just to watch the grass grow). Here are the Preps, all with their characteristic yellow hats, waiting to hear from the farmer about what was in store for them... it turns out that they were in for lots of fun with the farm animals, lots of pats, rides, cuddles and feeding! As you can see from this pic of Eli, he was pretty excited!

First up for Eli's group was a ride on Rusty the horse - here is Eli and a girl from his class. Eli quickly felt quite at home on the farm and he was strutting around like the #1 rooster himself...

Next came the lambs - all very exited and keen for a drink. The way they did this made it very exciting - they got all of the kids to stand around in one very large circle and every 8th child had a bottle of milk at the ready. Then, they released the lambs and they bolted into the middle of the circle in search of the bottles...lots of screams (mostly of excitement). After the lambs came the calves (thankfully these were not released into the middle of the group of Preps!) - I love the look on Eli's face in this photo on the right, he was having so much fun.

All this feeding of animals had given the kids a thirst themselves, and Eli readily volunteered to milk the cow and have a drink of extremely fresh milk. You can just make out the stream of milk being squirted into and past his mouth in this photo. I tried it too, it was pretty nice, but so warm! All of the kids also had a go milking the cow themselves - here's Eli spraying milk everywhere!

Eli and his group then got to hold some young chicks.

Not all of the kids were as excited and as gentle as Eli - he really did a great job holding the chicks...so much so that the farmer whacked a hat on his head and then plonked a chick on top!

Not to be left out, the pig then wanted a drink of milk too...and as you can see, Eli still has that big excited grin!

Eli rounded off his animal experiences with a ride on the back of a bull! Yeehah!

The kids even really enjoyed exploring the variety of animal bones on display too - I'm not sure if the intention was for the kids to 'wear' the bones, but Eli tried all of them on for size...

All in all it was a great day at the farm - all of the kids had a huge amount of fun and they were all really well behaved too. There were some very tired little Preps on the way home though and I think about a half of them used the bus trip home for a nap (not Eli though, he was still having too much fun!). I think he and I both are looking forward to future field trips with his school.