PHUKET: Phuket's Grumpy Old Men's Society decided to add some joy and excitement to the education of 45 children and their six teachers and volunteers from the BangJo Migrant Workers Learning Center on Friday.

GOMS has been involved is supporting the school in others ways over the past year. These children, for the first time getting an education through the willing helpers at the BangJo Learning Center, have never had a school field trip before as a break from the sometimes mundane day to day classroom activities.

Of the 45 children aged 3 to 13, only two had been to the Phuket Aquarium before, which is typical of the Burmese migrant workers whose parents make minimum wage and are limited in both education opportunities and ''fun activities'' for their children.

Some of the Burmese children have lived in Phuket for 10 years and just within the last year started school through the BangJo Migrant Workers Learning Center.

Thanks to the Phuket Aquarium, which provided an entrance discount for this GOMS project, the children not only had fun and wondermentbut also learned valuable environmental lessons.

The first lesson was the consequences to marine life of discarded plastic ending up in the oceans then being digested.

A second lesson revealed the damage fishing nets are causing to the ocean ecosystem, seeing first-hand the damage nets have done to many turtle that now make the Phuket Aquarium their home and cannot return to the sea.

This was reinforced to the children as they finished their tour: they cleaned up around the entrance way and parking lot at the aquarium!

A good lunch and ice cream added to the special treat for the children before they returned to their school in transportation arranged by GOMS.

But most of all, a lot of FUN was had by all and it was NOT a grumpy day for the 10 grumps that volunteered to chaperone the students.

In the end, these students were so well behaved, they could have chaperoned the Grumpy Old Men.