This morning we took our classes (26 kids in all) on a city bus up to the local library. Spoiler alert…it went really well. But how?

• Realistic Planning
  • We have a bus stop right outside our school.
  • We planned a short ride that ended at the local library. That way, if we ended up needing to wait along time for a return bus we had an inside/entertaining place we could be
  • We coordinated with the library and even emailed the transit office to double check we had the details right
• Prepping the Kids
  • I did a practice run of the trip and took pictures along the way. I made these into a book that we could read to get ready
  • We made a practice bus in our classroom and pretended to get on and off of it together.
• Day Of
  • We made sure all the chaperones realized that the journey was our destination in this case 🙂 The bus ride was the highlight (although seeing the back-of-house in the library wasn’t bad either!)
  • We had everyone use the bathroom and we packed snack just in case

All of this went into making it a fun trip. Oh,and luck. There was lots of luck involved. The rain stopped, no one fell, we had the chaperones we needed and the kids were excited for the adventure. All of that was pure luck.

You don’t want to count on luck getting you through. If you keep your expectations realistic and do deliberate prep so the kids know what to expect you will have a much higher chance of a successful day.