There was a chicken, a rabbit and a piglet, oh my!
And a tiny goat named Regis ... as in Greenwich television personality Regis Philbin.
These tiny critters went to school on Monday, visiting five students and their teacher, Martha Patterson, at the St. Barnabas Church Pre-School on Lake Avenue.
The animals were brought to the school by their handlers, Lisa Monachelli and Nicole Daurio, education programs manager and environmental educator, respectively, from the Stamford Museum and Nature Center. The women took the animals on the road to give the three- and four-year-olds some lessons about the farm.
The children learned that the socks and sweaters can be made from the wool shorn from the sheep, alpacas and llamas. They learned the animals can have fur or feathers as soft as down and have a penchant for fruit and vegetables just the way the youngsters should...and that the eggs they love for breakfast come from hens like Gertrude.
To reinforce their lessons, there was Gertrude the hen, Marley the bunny and then the young kid and piglet. (The piglet wasn't too happy to be in class—it was his first road trip since his birth three months ago—the same day as Prince George, the son of Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge.) Each child had a chance to touch the animals and in some cases, feed them.
Regis, a dwarf Nigerian goat, was seemingly the biggest hit with the students. (His twin sister—named Kathie Lee as in Regis Philbin's former TV partner and fellow Greenwich resident, Kathie Lee Gifford—stayed home at the farm.) The students gathered fallen maple leaves and fed Regis whose munching sounded as though he was crunching potato chips.
The museum's team makes several field trips to area schools teaching lessons about life on the farm and the animals that live there.
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