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Today we had our first field trip of the year. We went to the overture Center for a show called Doktor Kaboom! I had never heard of him before but when I looked up the synopsis of what his show would be like it's described with fun science experiments, explosions, and audience participation. The kids were super pumped about the field trip and couldn't wait to go! 

We got to the Overture Center and had to drive around in our bus to find a parking spot in the rain. When you get to the overture Center it is always crazy and full of people walking in the doors all at the same time. It seems like mass chaos - trying to corral all of our 32 kids and keeping track of them is quite stressful. We finally get to our seats in the Capitol theater and I am sweating like crazy! 

The lights go down and Doktor Kaboom walks out onto the stage. We are all pumped and waiting in excitement for what he is going to do...are you as excited to find out as we were?! Well don't be...

He came on to the stage and started chatting about science and what it means. He then proceeded to do an experiment where a rubber glove is sucked into a jar - example of a vacuum. That's cool and all, but from where we were sitting, it wasn't much. This also took 15 minutes because he explained it all along with personal stories - we don't care, just show us more stuff! More than half of what he said went over the kids heads. Next experiment was a catapult. Sounds cool but when he tries to shoot 25 pieces of banana into a girls mouth and it doesn't work, there should have been a time to let it go and move on! That took another 20 minutes. The last two science experiments were about the same. The worst part of the show was his constant jibber jabber at an excessive speed in a German accent - the kids just could not keep up! 

During the show the kids got really antsy - I couldn't blame them - I was texting a fellow teacher up a couple rows! One of my students asked me about mid-show: "can we go home yet?" We all know that when a student asks you to go back to school to do work instead of being on a field trip means this SUCKS. After a bit longer, another one of my students asks me when we can leave. Thank goodness it was only 5 minutes longer! The show was an hour and the Doktor did only 4 experiments. We were hoping for some explosions or fire! Your name is KABOOM for goodness sakes! 

When we got back to school I sat the kids down and we discussed how you can have expectations and hopes and how they might not always be what you thought. I told them that we would make a rocket (like the Doktor did) late on in the year and they got pretty excited about that.

You can't win 'em all and I am so proud of my students for doing the best they could!