Field Trip Time!

So this Thursday my 3rd and 4th grade classes went on an excursion aka field trip to the Jardines Botanicos in Madrid to learn about leaves. After about an hour of class we all got onto to 2 charter buses and went into Madrid for the workshop. All the 3rd and 4th teachers went as well as myself and one of the other auxiliares Yasmin. The Botanical Gardens are right next to the Prado Museum and are really pretty. Not much was in bloom at this time of the year but it was nice to be able to walk around to see the grounds. I went with one of the classes and Maria Jesus to walk around with some of the gardeners to look at how to identify trees by looking at the properties the leaves have. I now know tons about simple v. compound leaves and veins etc. The kids really got into it and were "detectives" trying to figure out what tree we were looking at based on what the leaves looked like. After we had our session on leaves we went to Retiro Park to have a picnic lunch. Having about 80 kids in a park having lunch is a bit chaotic. After the kids ate they were running around chasing birds, picking up stuff of the ground and playing. We somehow rounded everyone up to take a quick walk around the lake to look at the massive orange fish that swim around there. Yasmin and I live very close to Retiro park and it was the end of the day so the bus driver dropped us at the nearest metro stop! It was nice to get out of school for a day and see the kids outside of class. Tomorrow Allison has a day off so I think we are going to take a day trip. I'll post pictures!