SPL's Blog

   
 

On Wednesday, our usual preschool day, we invited our class to go to the Hidden Villa Farm (SPL and my first visit).  It was a sunny and windy, day.  We parked our car and immediately found AK and his mom, Rochelle, who pulled up and parked next to us.  Later, Matsura and her son A, arrived (actually, we found them as we were walking @ toddler speed from the parking lot to the gardens).

the kids quickly noticed that the animals were further up, past the gardens and made it clear that that was their desired destination, not the gardens.  We found baby sheep first – though couldn’t go in the pen with the other visiting children (a fieldtrip of kindergarteners).  A was particularly bummed out about this (turns out we learned that it would’ve been better to schedule a guided tour — but that had to be done ahead of time and we didn’t know until after we got there 😦  oh well….).

Next we found the pigs.  Man were they impressive.  There was a sow who was incredibly pregnant and looked like the definition of uncomfortable — poor thing (I read in their newsletter later that she is due to farrow in April).  The average number of piglets can be between 10 and 16?!?!?!  yikes.

Then we found this pond that had all kinds of algae growing.  After was able to swipe his stick and get some out, the other 2 boys quickly found sticks and tried to figure out how to (harder than it looks).  After 10 minutes or so of exploring this, and each boy having some success, we were off to the chicken coop. 

I *loved* how this was set up: they had that the children could lift up and look in.  Inside, SPL found a chicken in 3 out of 4 cases.  after returning to the coop 15 minutes later, SPL discovered there were 3 eggs in one box, 2 in another, and 1 had fallen onto the coop floor.  😦

We found a sunny spot to eat our snack outside by a small stream.  We even ran into Wendolyn who’ll be SPL’s outdoor preschool teacher in the fall (we’re going to 2 preschools: one parent participation and one that is drop off and outside in local parks and outdoor spaces :-).

And on our way back to the car, started and found some worms 🙂  And AK and ended our trip by for a bit before we had to carry them like footballs to the car :-).

What a fun Spring Break!