The Stock Show comes to Denver every January and I went on a field trip earlier in the month to the Stock Show with the Kindergarten classes. We saw & touched farm animals, went into the basement of the coliseum to see the cattle that were being groomed for the show, saw the show-jumping horses and sat through a short show hosted by one of the rodeo clowns. The highlight of the morning for Cullen was riding in the big yellow school bus...without a seatbelt!The Kindergarten classes had their own rodeo at school on Friday and I volunteered to help. Cullen wanted to dress up as a cowboy and we already had some chaps and a vest (waistcoat) plus a cowboy hat which he wore to school. As we were walking to line up Cullen got very shy and was unsure of himself. He wanted to take his costume off but then realized that other kids had dressed up too and then was OK with it. Thats the first time he's been unsure about that kind of thing - usually he doesn't give a hoot about what others are doing - so I was surprised that he was self conscious about his costume.
The gym was decorated with everything 'cowboy' and there were stations with activities scattered around the room. The kids were divided into small groups and each group had a Kindie Mom to take them from station to station. There was a 10 min time limit for each station and I soon learned that 10 mins with 6-7 kids each time is actually very long!! I was assigned the barrel racing station which meant that 3 kids at a time had to race on stick horses around trash cans that were decorated as barrels. I showed them how to do it but invariably they did their own thing and it was pretty amusing. My voice was hoarse (pun intended) by the time I was finished. Four Kindie classes meant 2.5 hours of barrel racing!
Cullen had a great time and after the rodeo was over, I had lunch with him in the cafeteria and then he went off to recess with his mates. The 2nd graders then went into the cafeteria for lunch and I joined Jordan for lunch so it was a great day for me.
Story-time around the campfire.
Eating a 'smore at the campfire.
Milking the cow
Yeehaw!!