Cool Field Trips

Meeting a patrol horse.

It's the end of the semester, and time for me to reflect on what we've been up to.  So far this year, we've participated in some really fun field trips with our homeschool group.  All of them were free. Last year, I organized a visit to the Portland Mounted Patrol Unit stables, which is a wonderful tour, and this year we did it again.  This tour is a big hit with kids, and really interesting.  They show you the whole stables and tell you all about how they care for the horses.  We left with a new respect for these majestic animals.

Another big hit was the tour of the Guide Dogs for the Blind facility in Boring, OR.  Our tour guides told us all about how the dogs are selected, trained, and cared for.  Their website says that tours are limited to 2nd graders and older, but they made an exception for our homeschool group.  I believe this was because every child would be accompanied by a parent.  Not unlike the few horses that make the cut to belong to a Mounted Patrol Unit, very few dogs have what it takes to be a guide dog for the blind.  They explained that dogs that are highly intelligent but unable to meet all the requirements are often still able to be service animals, sometimes for the hearing impaired, and sometimes as rescue dogs.  Rad homeschooling mom Nicki invited us along when her son became super interested in guide dogs and wanted to learn more.  

Blending ice cream ingredients. 

Another wonderful tour Nicki set up for us was at Cool Moon Ice Cream.  We discovered Cool Moon and their scrumptious homemade ice cream last summer on a hot day at Jamison Square, which is the place to beat the heat in the Pearl.  I had often thought that an ice cream parlor nearby was all Jamison Square needed to be a perfect water play area, and now it has one!   They made a big batch of "birthday cake" ice cream, added plenty of sprinkles, and gave the kids free samples.  Then we all headed for the dining room for some more sampling!  It was neat meeting entrepreneurs and learning about their terrific small business.  

Getting ready for the pizza toss!

Another culinary adventure was in store for us at Pizzicato Pizza.  They let kids see inside their walk-in refrigerator, marvel at the giant Hobart mixer, and explained the science of yeast.  They even gave the kids little dough balls to play with to see how gluten makes dough stretchy.  But hands-down the most thrilling thing was watching the kids' reaction to the amazing pizza toss!  This inspired my little picky eater to try a piece of pizza for the very first time.  Now when I make homemade pizza, Jasper keeps demanding that I toss it in the air, despite my protests that it's a lot harder than it looks!  Homeschooling mom Shannon set this one up for us, because her kids love to watch the pizza toss whenever they go out for pizza. 

Thermometer in the compost pile.

I set up a tour for us at Sunderland Recycling Facility.  In the fall when the City of Portland collects leaves, they bring them here for composting.  They also bring big chunks of asphalt and concrete from maintenance and construction projects, which are crushed with a huge rock crusher and used again on new projects.  They explained the science of composting, and let the kids walk all around the giant rock crusher. They keep  thermometers that look like household meat thermometers with giant stems, stuck into the compost piles at all times, to make sure the leaves are not getting so hot that they are likely to catch on fire!  This tour turned out to be more of a civics lesson than I expected, because the City of Portland has taken a portion of the property for use as "Dignity Village", temporary housing for the formerly homeless.  And the facility is next to a state prison which our guide explained is used as transitional housing for prisoners who are due to be released soon.  These are all things our government is doing that we rarely think about or get a chance to glimpse.  

Giant rock crusher!