On Tuesday, March 29, Jamestown Elementary School stepped away from their school building to attend their first field trip since before the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. They chose the Fiske Planetarium for their very first venture back into school field trips. The students seemed astounded as they were immersed in the experiential exhibits that were presented by the planetarium.

Jen Anderson, the teacher for the kindergarten through second grade classroom, was on her first field trip with the school. She had been hired at the beginning of the COVID lockdown, in September of 2021, and had not had the chance to escort her classroom on an out of town field trip. Anderson said, “Other than walking field trips in Jamestown, I took them to the park a few times last year, this is our first out of town field trip.” She added, “Although there were some hiccups with the bus not showing up and the pizza being late, I thought the kids were incredibly flexible and followed directions really well, and we had a lot of fun.”

Nick Conant, the Fiske Planetarium theatre manager and programmer, brought the students into the domed theater for an immersive film. He answered questions and captivated the students with images of stars, planets, constellations, galaxies, and other celestial phenomena.

For Adrienne Gosbee, mother of Juniper, a second grader at Jamestown, this was also the first time she had been on a field trip with the school. “We got an introduction to the stars and where they are in the night sky from where we are here in Colorado,” she said, “And we saw a short movie describing the history of the Solar System from the Big Bang, onwards through the early evolution of our planet.” For her and Juniper, the wait was well worth it. “It felt awesome. It was great to be out learning, seeing the kids excited about new things and going together on an adventure.”

The film is called We are Stars narrated by Andy Serkis and is about the history of the universe and where we are in that timeline, tracing the elements in our body back to the beginning of the universe.

Nina Byers, the Creative Coordinator of educational programs at Fiske Planetarium, led the younger students, kindergarten through second grade, in a sound lab exercise. “They were… learning the basic fundamentals of how sound looks like a wave, and depending on its pitch, that wave changes,” she said. “We go down to the lower frequencies to vibrate the floor, so they have an idea what it feels like,” said Byers.

And as for the students of Jamestown on their first field trip in two years? “They did very well, actually, these kids are very well behaved even though they were hungry,” Byers said. “They were very polite and quiet, and actually raised their hands and spoke one at a time, which is not so common.”

Anderson had chosen the sound lab for her classroom because it fell under the learning objective of light, sound, and sun. “It was great to get some solar system, stars, sun lessons in the program, and the sound lab hit on the sound standard,” she said, “and it was really neat they got to have hands-on practice with it.”

The students were able to draw on the lesson to develop a sensory understanding of sound, making drawings to help visualize sound waves, and even got to experience lying down on a specially designed floor which was created for students with hearing impairment, to give them a sense of what sound can feel like.

For Gosbee, the Jamestown Elementary crew helped to make the field day special. “Absolutely, we have a wonderful group here. She’s been here since kindergarten, so this is her third year. So far, so good. She loves it very much. It feels good to be out and about again, and a little bit closer to normal.”

The older classroom, third through fifth grade, took part in another presentation from Conant, which involved a globe which hangs in the hallway of the planetarium. It has four projectors from different angles that project graphic duplicates of the different planets in the solar system. Conant dug deeper into the planetary movements, different chemical compositions, and climates that the planets and other celestial bodies are made of in the Solar System and was able to show fairly accurate representations of these projected onto the suspended globe.

Reflecting on the return to having school field trips, Anderson is still not totally settled in. “I’m still actually getting used to not wearing a mask. I sometimes feel like I’m naked on the face or something, she said, but I do feel like we’re getting back to a ‘first’ normal for me at Jamestown, and yeah, it feels good.”

The growing pains from the first field trip back were softened by a trip to The Sink on the Hill for some pizza and reflecting on the fascinating trip to the Fiske Planetarium. The students were happy and relaxed, at least for the afternoon.

Fiske Planetarium is located at 2414 Regent Drive, Boulder. To find out more about Fiske Planetarium, check out their website at https://www.colorado.edu/fiske/