Day Eighteen

Today our chicks are on their eighteenth day of development. Over the four day weekend the incubator sat on a end table in my living room (the eggs need turned 3 times a day) and Maddy helped me turn them each day.
This afternoon Miss Barbara, from Franklin County 4-H, came into our room to continue to talk to our classroom about the chick's development and growth. She read them a story then showed them pictures of chicks on various days of growing. She brought us in jars that showed actual chicks that were caught in various stages of development and then died (these pictures are kinda disgusting and not the best quality)







I am happy to report that even though one egg was not fertilized and three have stopped developing (through NO fault of our own), the other 26 chicks are developing nicely! While we took our time looking through the jars, Miss Barbara called up the tables to take turns candling the eggs to see inside.

We are continuing to draw and document our chick's growth in our journals

Over this weekend, they will begin to peck through the air sac to get to the egg shell and you will be able to hear them peeping inside the incubator (too bad we won't be here to hear it)

On Monday they will begin to hatch :-)



Our newest project

Well ladies and gentlemen,
Our big announcement: The chicks have arrived (no, no not in that way - they are still in egg form)
Yesterday was Day One when we used a pencil to mark our initials on all the eggs (not only does it give the kids each an egg, it helps us keep track when we have to start turning them 3 times a day tomorrow) and then gently placed them inside the 98 degree incubator.

All of the supplies we need to hatch chicks:

a candling light, chick feed, a heat lamp, and a box to keep them in :-)



We have become documenting their growth in our journals and some of us even wrote about our excitement later on during Kid Writing time

Katy's story:

"We are doing a new project and it is hatching baby chicks! I got one too! My friends got one too!"

Our chicks should begin hatching on March 26th & 27th

Our chickies

Well it is time to say goodbye to our chickies today.....

They have been an AMAZING learning experience for us in our classroom. Through these cute lil animals we have learned about responsibility, a chick's life cycle & development, birth, caring, "nice touches", sharing, sympathy, and unfortunately, even death (8 of our eggs did not even hatch and so we had a "funeral" yesterday to say goodbye to them all)

I hope your children have enjoyed this experience as much as I have!

if you look really closely, you can see his "egg tooth" on the end of his beak

Sebastian and Isaac spending time with the chicks who were under the heat lamp in the box (at this point, we had 9 in the box)

I know that they were just born, but how they could sleep with 22 kindergarteners and my big teaching mouth in the same room is a miracle all in itself! haha

Joel and Alexis at the incubator (we still had about 7 chicks inside of it since you were only able to open the incubator once a day to let out the ones that had hatched)

Meet KFC

Ah, we feel like a bunch of proud Mommas and Papas tonight: We hatched our first egg (ok the incubator really hatched it, but we helped ALOT!)

This morning, I came in and the incubator had an egg that looked like this:

A little hole with one HARD working chicken stuck inside of it

Remember how many times that chick has to peck to get out?

20,000 times!!!!!!

At the end of the day, I took the kids out for an extra recess since they sat for a double music period to get ready for the concert. I poked my head in across the hall and told Mrs. Schoenberger to bring her kids over and see the beak poking out of the egg. I also told her that if the kids were super quiet they would also hear the "peeping" noises

We came back inside from recess 10 mins later and the chick was hatched!

(with about 6 more really starting to crack so I bet they will be  hatched when I go back to school in the morning)

Now all of our eggs have our initials on and we named our eggs too 

(the names ranged from Fuzzball, Spike, Agent Isaac, Lily, George, etc...)

but sadly the egg was cracked and so without initials we don't know our first little chick's proper name

So, improvising meet the newest (and tiniest) member of our classroom:

KFC

Kindergarten's First Chick 

Hellooooo Chickies

Today, Miss Barbara (from 4-H) came out to educate us and K1 a little bit more about our lil chickies that are getting ready to hatch in our white square incubator at the back of the room

Some interesting chicken hatching information?

• a chick will peck at the shell an average of about 20,000 times before they are finally done
• eggs must be turned three times a day to prevent sticking to the sides of the eggs and to help develop their muscles

Our eggs are on day 8 and will be hatching around day 21 (monday May 23th)

Miss Barbara also did something called candling with the chicks where you use a special light to be able to see inside the eggs to see how they are growing. On day eight this is basically what the kids saw:

She pointed out the chick's eyes to the students and the good news that is that 26 out of our 27 eggs have all been fertilized and growing right on track :-)

Egg-tastic

We are the official new home of a batch of 27 baby chickie eggs. They are due to hatch in 20 days (the week we have our Renfrew field trip). They were placed in the incubator this morning followed by a classroom meeting of the rules and some of the things to expect: "Please do not ask me if the eggs are going to hatch this week or next cause it is going to take awhile!" haha Each child gets their own egg marked with initials and a large X on the other side to use for turning purposes. We have a lot of work ahead of us: change the water daily and turn the eggs three times a day. Woo-boy! Will keep you posted :-)