Sorry Mark's Mom. We had the Truck Day (I just love saying those two words [img]smile.gif[/img] ) yesterday. It was a roaring success. Not all the trucks showed up, but we still had around 30. The kids had a blast climbing in, over and around the trucks. They also got to blow the horns (some of them had some very serious air horns that were very LOUD LOL).
We had a police mobile precinct (with a tv camera on top that panned continuously around the event), a firetruck, rescue squad, swat team vehicle (w/ assualt rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, equipment packs etc.), a prison van (w/ hand cuffs, leg shackles, billy clubs, etc,. He gave them the straight dope about what happens to law breakers. Surprisingly enough, he was a big hit with the kids as was the DMV officer), a whole row of Dept of Transportation trucks (dump trucks, motor grader, sign truck, paint truck, mower tractor, street sweeper, bucket truck), city vehicles, and utility vans. We had a giant crane, forest service fire fighting trucks w/bulldozer, huge tow trucks, an over-the-road tractor trailer, two big landscape trucks (one for hauling mulch and one for hauling everything else), a culligan water bottle van, a hospice type van, and I am not sure what else.
It was a hot day so we had ice cold water and cookies/donuts set up in the air conditioned cafeteria. Kids came through then went back outside. We had a plan to send kids from station to station in an orderly fashion, but the plan fell apart in the very beginning so we just had the teachers move around freely with their groups. After some initial confusion it ran fairly smoothly. Teachers are pretty good at adapting to changes.
We set up the vehicles in the bus parking lot, the teachers parking lot (they parked in the rear grassy area), and the firetruck parked at the end of the student drop off area. The couple that organized this event, and their 5th grade son, were stationed at the two entrances to the school with walkie talkies and directed the trucks to their parking areas. This is where the confusion came in. It became clear very quickly that it would be too much trouble to put the trucks where they were planned because they were coming in at different times and would make parking and manuevering difficult. So we just pointed them toward a general area and let them park as best they could. We also had coffee and donuts set out for the truck drivers. One of the mothers took it upon herself to push a coffee/donut cart from truck to truck just before the kids came out. That was nice. Later the organizers' son went from truck to truck with a pitcher of ice water.
We had a local radio station on hand that broadcasted live from the event. they talked about it before the event during and again the next morning when they commented again on how much fun the kids had. we also had the local TV staion come out. They aired the section at the end of the 6:00pm, 11pm and 6am news. My kids arm was on TV LOL. We also had a newspaper reporter come out right after the event. He tooks some notes and asked if someone could send him a picture.
Problems:
The megaphone didn't work, and the organizer forgot his foghorn to signal that it was time to move to the next station (not that it would have worked anyway since the truck horns were so loud and plentiful [img]smile.gif[/img] )
Some drivers brought items like water bottles, pencils, Frisbees, etc., but didn't bring enough for the entire student body. Some kids didn't handle that too well.
Ok I have babbled on too long. I'm done
