Last week I volunteered to go on three field trips for two of my kid’s classes.

I think field trips are a bit like grant money. If you don’t use them, you can’t carry them forward and there is a threat they might be taken away for the following year so, the final weeks of school usually involve a cramming of museums, water parks, geological digs, library scavenger hunts and petting zoos.

I was up for all of it.

One constant worry that continued to arise was “what if we lose someone?” Very often we would travel on one or two school buses with a number of classes, teachers and parents in addition to 60+ kids.

It made sense to divide the kids into smaller groups with a chaperone for each but what happens when the kids get into the museum or the park and run in every direction?

If I haven’t mentioned it before, we can learn a lot from our kids.

I paced between the water park and dry park pointing and counting out my five kids; repeating the names “Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry, Louis,” until I finally spotted them all and then I did it all over again.

I envied schools and daycares who thought to dress their kids in colourful pinnies or matching neon shirts but by the time the kids transitioned from clothes, to bathing suits to towels, to different dry clothes, they were masters of disguise.

I was waiting for them to emerge from behind a row of shrubs in tie-on bears and wigs.

The tension was palpable between the squealing at the water park, the kids running over and under bridges and how about those in the trees?

Then something magical happened.

The kids were playing a game called Manhunt.

I’ve heard them talk about Manhunt before though I don’t think it involves a man or a hunt. Still, they love it as it involves tag and hiding, two things every chaperone dreads.

Just when I thought I had lost all five of my kids, in fact, I couldn’t spot even one of the 60+ kids we had earlier loaded onto two buses, a small voice called, “New Game!” and all 60+ kids came sprinting from wherever they had been hiding, some in full camouflage, others using tree branches to blend in with the foliage  and joined in some sort of ceremonial sticking of their feet into a pile so someone could be chosen to be “it” for the next round.

So that’s how it’s done?