Field trips take the place of co-op on the Fridays they fall on. Linda Stansberry is our field trip coordinator this year: she calls ahead, gets the group rate, and makes the nametags. Sign up with her by the Friday before. Every family drives its own children unless you've arranged a carpool, and every family stays with its own children unless you've arranged that too.

This was the field trip for Georgia History, but everybody came. We saw the gold dome from the parking lot first, and Linda Stansberry told the children the gold leaf came from Dahlonega, up in the mountains, where Georgia had a gold rush in 1829, twenty years before California's. That was the most-repeated fact in our house for a week. Gabriel told it to the man at the gas station.

The legislature meets in the winter and early spring, so the chambers were empty and we could look down into the House and the Senate from the galleries and imagine. The children were most impressed by the size of everything, the marble, the echo, and the fact that there was a museum inside the building, upstairs, with cases full of things. The grown-ups were most impressed that nobody touched any of the cases. (One child licked a brass railing. We are not saying whose.)

Note for next time: bring quarters for the parking meters, and do not try to get out of downtown Atlanta at 2:30 on a Friday. Just don't.

A family dairy, about an hour north, with around a hundred and twenty Holsteins (the black and white ones), milked twice a day, every day, Christmas included. The farmer's wife gave the tour, and she was wonderful with the little ones. We saw the milking parlor, where the cows walk in on their own and line up because they know the routine better than our kids know theirs. We saw the big stainless steel tank where the milk is cooled until the truck comes. We bottle-fed calves, which was the highlight for everybody under ten and several people over thirty.

Facts the children came home with: a cow has one stomach with four parts. A milk cow can drink about a bathtub full of water in a day. Cows like routine and hate surprises. (Olivia: "Like Daddy.")

We finished with ice cream made from their own milk, at picnic tables by the barn. Bridget (4) fell asleep in her car seat before we got to the highway, with a ring of chocolate around her mouth, smelling powerfully of calf.

Note for next time: rubber boots, or old sneakers, and a plastic bag for the shoes on the ride home. Dawn Duggan's minivan will never be the same.

A morning show on the fall sky in Atlanta, followed by lunch in a park nearby if the weather is nice. Linda is getting the group rate now, so sign up with her by Friday, October 15 with the number of children and grown-ups in your family. The show is dark and the seats lean back, so we recommend it for ages four and up. If you have a little one who's afraid of the dark, Penny Forster has kindly offered to sit in the lobby with the babies and the nervous.

To get ready: Kelly Nickerson's science class is learning the planets in order this month, and Lynda has a library book on the constellations that she'll lend to anybody who returns it. Go outside one clear night before the trip and find the big W of Cassiopeia, low in the northeast after supper. Then the planetarium will show you what you missed.

Friday, December 3: a children's Christmas concert downtown, a morning performance for school groups, about an hour long. We went last year and the kids still talk about the sleigh bells. Details in November.

Friday, December 10, 7:00 p.m.: Our Christmas Program, in the church sanctuary, with every family invited to bring grandparents, neighbors and anybody else who'll sit still. The K-2 choir sings four songs, the 3rd-8th choir sings three, the middle school speech students read the Christmas story from Luke 2 in parts, and the preschoolers do the nativity in bathrobes and dish towels. There's always one shepherd who waves at his mother the whole time. There's usually more than one. Cookies and punch in the fellowship hall after. Sign up for a plate of cookies with Ruby Brogdon.

That's the last Friday of the semester. We start again in January.

Field Trip Rules (the short list)

1. Every child wears a nametag with the co-op's name, but not the child's last name.
2. Every family is responsible for its own children. If you're taking someone else's, you're responsible for those too, and you write their names down.
3. Count heads getting out of the car. Count again getting back in.
4. We are guests. Say please and thank you. Write a thank-you note the week after (it counts as language arts).
5. Pack a lunch, even if you think you won't need one. You will.