Ashland Nature Center: A Field TRIP

I went on a field trip today with my daughter's first grade class to The Ashland Nature Center in Delaware. The day started off great, but TRIP is definately the operative word for this Field Trip, but more about that later. We learned a lot about amphibians and even saw some real life animals up close, like this Australian Tree Frog.

Then, we went off into the woods to search for salamanders. Of course, the kids were WAY too loud and moved WAY too fast, so we didn't find any. But, we were excited to move on to the "marsh" to see what we could find there.

We had much better luck here finding tadpoles and frogs and even a newt. The kids were excited. Almost a little to excited because, that's when I had to single-handedly (literally, because I had my camera in the other hand) rescue a boy out of the muddy marsh! This is where the word TRIP comes into play. Now I am not positive that he tripped. In fact, I am not sure how he would up face first in the mud, but that's where I found him. Funny how fast these things can happen. He was right next to me on the dock one second and then SPLAT . . . the next.

I felt so bad for him. But I also felt like a super hero until the teacher came by with a big bag of wipes and got him all cleaned up. In the end, it was the little boy himself that would up looking like the super hero, running around in the teacher's maroon coat flapping behind him like a cape.