Second graders visit the pumpkin patch
Peninsula Elementary second graders and adult helpers scoured the pumpkin patch for the best pumpkins during the second grade's field trip.
MOSES LAKE - The guy in the dark blue sweatshirt tried, and tried, and tried, to pick up that darn pumpkin. He picked it up and tried to hoist it on to his shoulder, but it just wouldn't cooperate. It was just too heavy.
The girl with the purple backpack thought she had it all figured out, so she walked right by the little pumpkins strewn across the path. None of those little ones for her - she got a great big pumpkin and an adult volunteer helped her load it into her pack. Unfortunately the makers of the backpack didn't count on a pumpkin when deciding how much weight it could carry. It broke the strap.
It was the annual pumpkin patch trip for the second grade from Peninsula Elementary School. Every year the second graders get on the bus and visit the fish hatchery, and then the class and adult volunteers go to Joan Dopps' house, where every kid gets his or her own pumpkin.
For 26 years Peninsula second graders have made the trip to the Dopps' house for pumpkins, every year, rain or shine. The kids even got their pumpkins last year, when the visit came a few days after the death and funeral of Dopps' husband, Tom.
The second grade has been coming to the pumpkin patch so long that the parents of some of the second graders made the trip, Joan Dopps said in an earlier interview.
Second grade teachers used to have orange T-shirts for pumpkin patch day, and the kids would sit on the bluff at the edge of the yard and get lessons in the topography of the ground below. In 2013 every kid got a Golden Delicious or Red Delicious apple from the trees around the Dopps home, and when they had finished eating their apples the kids walked the quarter mile to the pumpkin patch.
The patch was filled with bright orange pumpkins and a few that were still green, and kids went after big or little pumpkins according to their taste and their calculation of how much weight they could carry back to the bus. The boy with the blue coat was sure he could carry his coat in one hand and his pumpkin in the other, and he almost made it. But finally he had to stop and put on his coat and use both arms for his pumpkin.
Moms and dads got pictures, and the pumpkins were safely stored away before the trip back to school.