Overnight field trip to OMSI

When I got hired to teach fifth grade at O'Hara this year, I asked my principal if I could start a new tradition at our school.  I thought it would be fun if the 5th grade were to go on a really cool field trip together.  At our school, the fourth graders go to the state capital and the sixth grade goes to outdoor school, but fifth grade didn't have a fun field trip to cap off the year!  I did some research and finally decided on an overnight field trip to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry).  My students have been SO excited for this trip all year and it was finally here!

...on our luxury tour bus, ready to leave for OMSI!

Heather and I

This picture was taken earlier in the evening when we still had energy!

An overhead picture of the Museum

It is a HUGE Museum full of hands on Science activies!

OMSI had tons of fun activities planned out for the kids!

Here they are chasing tennis balls that the kids were taking turns shooting out of a "cannon".

Some of the girls on the earthquake simulator.

My good friend Brenda and her son Brennan.

Brennan is in my class, so of course Brenda came as a chaperone!

We had so much  fun!

There was even karaoke!

Almost of all of my students got up and sang.

These guys are singing YMCA

I know that you will not be surprised to hear that they talked me into getting up there and singing a song too.

Heather (co-worker), Jim (a parent) and I sang "I will survive" (of course)

 you would have thought we were real rock stars, they were cheering and screaming for us the whole time.

I gave Michael (my teaching partner) my camera to take a picture, but he took a video instead and I am NOT posting a video of that hot mess!  The kids LOVED it though!

Yes - we slept on the floor!

We got to sleep in the dinosaur room.  We slept under the huge T-Rex skeleton!

These are some of the awesome parents that came with us!

This was not a "relaxing" trip, and they were all so great!

The whole class in front of the bus, after we had made it through the night at OMSI!

This trip was a lot of work (and stress) at times, but my students were so excited about it beforehand and even more so when we got back.  We got back to school just in time for lunch and spent most of the afternoon talking about all of the fun memories we had made together!

PS - Pancho is at a trade show in Las Vegas right now so I had the doubly fun job of planning for my own children while I was gone.  I wrote out an amazingly long and intricate schedule for my Mom and Dad including 2 different school start and end times, soccer games, basketball practice etc.  Of couse they did an amazing job and my kids were so happy to have so much fun with Grammy and Papa! My mom was showing me some cute pics they took of Sam and Lucy hunting for racoons (in full costume) and climbing trees!  Grammy and Papa's house is the BEST!!!