In order to be able to take some older children to Kidslit – a reading competition, in October, I need to have experience of assisting on a school trip beforehand . Hence my assistant Marivic and I found ourselves helping out on the Year 3 visit today to the Siam ancient city, park located about 50 mins away from the school.

I don’t see an ancient city for years and years and then I visit 2 in the same week! Seems that ancient cities are a bit like the Number 6 bus!

Altogether there were 5 classes of approx 24 children. My class only had 21 and there were 3 adults so good ratios. However a hundred + highly excited 7 year olds can certainly make some noise (as I discovered)

The journey there was smooth and without incident (apart from one girl on our bus who managed to have 3 nose bleeds but the TA Miss Jo dealt with that. She looked pretty experienced so I guessed this happened regularly)

I passed the time picking up football and other cards from the floor of the bus when the boys dropped them (which they achieved with amazing regularity).

I was given the official school teachers PE kit for the occasion. They only had a massive size left but at least I looked the part. Here I am with the class teacher Tom and Miss Jo

Siam ancient city is in fact a huge outdoor museum of Thai buildings and structures. What we might think of as a sturdy gazebo- type structure is called a Sala and comes in a variety of sizes and can be highly decorated.

Each class had a tram (so the children were largely contained) and we visited 8 different places in rotation where the children did a variety of activities. This is at ‘The Sala of the 80 yogis’ where they had to copy the poses.

Some children were exceptionally supple (she’s a gymnast )

We saw replicas of the royal barges which the children had to draw. My role for the day seemed to be ‘Carrier of the colouring equipment’ and I am pleased to say that all pencils, crayons and erasers were used then returned and accounted for. A job well done I feel.

The barges were beautiful.

We saw a traditional Thai house from Chiangmai

And elaborate fountains…

The children particularly liked the recreation of the elephant wars

After lunch the children were allowed to visit the ‘market’ and had each brought 100 baht (£2).

Well they descended on those stalls like a plague of locusts. I have not witnessed such frenzied shopping for ages. It was clearly the highlight of the whole trip!

The heat index registered 39 degrees today so Marivic and I returned hot and exhausted but having had a lovely day out. Thank you Year 3.