School's almost out

School visits are tapering off, as teachers cope with exams and marking and the upcoming holidays.

But that's not to say we've been left completely on our own. For one thing, as school visits decrease, individual visits shoot up.

And we have been visited this month by 69 grade one students at Mountain Road primary school in Woodstock, under the guidance of educator Leré Zeeman. A few days later, their older classmates from grade six joined us after this was organised by teacher Fatiema Stolk.

It was Leré Zeeman's first trip to the science centre, and she was worried about the lack of parental oversight and the size of the science centre - but that was before she attended her pre-meeting, where she oriented herself.

After the actual school trip, she was relieved, commenting on the efficiency and organisation with which staff sorted out places to drop school bags, divided the three classes into groups and rotated the kids to a new exhibit or experiment every half an hour. The lack of parents was no longer a worry, because the staff made sure that no small budding scientists managed to get lost.

Leré was also struck by the niceness of her female guide (sadly anonymous) and specifically office staff like Carmen Solomons. ''We'll be going every year.''

In between, the MTN Sciencentre hosted the grade 5s from Oakhurst Primary, led by teacher Pam Frost, and the kids from Forres Preparatory school, led by teacher Lyn Richards. Both schools hail from Rondebosch.

In the same week, the science centre was visited by 118 grade 6 students from the mixed Afrikaans/English school known as Sid G. Rule primary school under teacher Jerome Jeniker in Grassy Park.

''We go regularly to the science centre,'' said Jerome Jeniker. ''It was quite different this year because they offered us workshops on the planets and there was much more to do.''

Two religious private schools, Laerskool Paul Greyling from VisHoek (Fish Hoek) and the grades R and the grades 4 from the Christian Private School (CPM) in Malmesbury also visited. CPM teacher Henriette Smit said, ''it was excellent and all my parents loved it.''

Parents? Turns out that Mevrou Smit had 50 parents and grandparents there to ''accompany'' the 24 children. ''Some came just to see what was going on,'' she confirmed. But not to worry that this altered the focus: ''the children enjoyed it as well.''