Children in Britain got the shepherd’s pie scared out of them earlier this month when educators, with the cooperation of local police, staged an alien invasion for the little tykes with the goal of inspiring creative thinking and improving their writing skills.

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As reported in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, the Sussex students — some as young as 7 — were told a UFO had crashed nearby and were encouraged to follow a trail of debris, whereupon they witnessed a performance that included a school staff member’s “alien abduction.”

Parents were not told of the July 10 exercise beforehand, and one described her daughter as “shell shocked” upon returning home from school.

On the bright side, at least now the kids will have something to put in their journals.

(Via Gawker’s io9 blog)