My daughters class had a field trip to the Planetarium yesterday. We live in Northwest Indiana so most field trips are to Chicago so I assumed we were taking a trip to the Adler Planetarium. Much to my surprise we were going to a local Planetarium, the Merrillville Planetarium. WHO KNEW?

Actually the Planetarium is housed in Pierce Middle School and was a short ride, which is great when on a school bus. They gave us time to eat lunch first while a previus group was finishing up and then it was our turn. We entered a domed room with reclining seats and the kids were pretty excited to get started. They learned how the sun rises and sets, learned about Orion, The North Star, The Big and Little Dippers, The moon and Spaceships and had tons of questions for our presenter! Overall it was a good experience, a shorter trip if you don’t have much time but a great experience and they made it appropriate for our 1st graders.

My co-leader and I took our girl scouts on a field trip to a local grocery store (Strack and Van’Til) yesterday. Sometimes you run out of places to go and things to do, we found this place thru a direct mailing from www.Fieldtripfactory.com. If you visit the site, you type in your zip code and find field trip places in your town, many of which are free.

Our girls got to visit different areas of the store, the Dairy Section, Produce Section, Meat Section, Deli Section and Bakery. In most areas they got to sample a food, learned about making healthy food choices and also learned how items got from other countries to the U.S.A. At the end of the visit they got to scan some items at Checkout and received a goodie bag to take home. Overall they enjoyed the visit, although a few were a little squeemish when in the Meat Cooler (my daughter included).