Field trip

Today was the third grade field trip to Beaver Lake Nature Center and I was allowed to tag along as a chaperone (no snickering, please). I was not on the starting roster of chaperones but a late substitution; one of the parents had a medical issue with their child yesterday and had to cancel.

The purpose of the field trip was to visit the maple sugarbush and see how maple syrup is made.

Pat, the friendly Beaver Lake intern, told the students what types of trees are tapped and how those trees are tapped:


Here they see and smell a vat of sap boiling down into syrup (that is Aidan's head almost in the middle of the photo):


Pat then challenged them to taste samples of maple syrup and commercial syrup, and then correctly identify the maple syrup:


I correctly identified the maple syrup; it was not as thick nor as sweet as the commercial syrup.

After eating lunch, the class went for a hike:


No students were lost in the woods, fell into the lake, or broke any bones so I guess it was a successful field trip!