Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Nearly every year my team teaching partner and I take our kindergarten classes to the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union in Seattle. It is a fabulous field trip! The children are each outfitted with a life jacket and they set sail in an oomiak (Native American skin boat similar to a very long canoe). Half the class is paddling in an oomiak and the other half is making wooden sailboats inside the center. They use an already formed wooden hull, hand drill, dowel for a mast, hammer, nails, string, ripstop nylon for a sail, and 'Presto!", it's a model sailboat! Each child gets a turn at being a sailor and a boat builder. It is the best field trip for photos unless of course your camera gets wet. It only took a second but, a child yelled' "I dropped my paddle!" and I leaned over to retrieve the paddle and my camera slid off my lap into the 4" of water in the bottom of the boat. The camera actually dried out and I did not loose any of the photos I had taken but it did put a 'damper' on my photo enthusiasm for the remainder of the field trip.