Our Chicken Eggs Are Here!

Hello family and friends!

I'm happy to announce that we have officially started our exploration of eggs and chicks! We received chicken eggs and are hoping to have them hatched by next month. We were able to get them placed in the incubator last Friday so they've been with us for a week so far.  While we wait, we will be spending time working on some science experiments and doing a lot of research. It's safe to say that we'll be egg and chicken experts by the end of March! Everyone seems really excited about it and we've been checking on our eggs daily. It's important that the incubator stays at 100 degrees, so this has been a great opportunity for us to learn how to read a thermometer and explore numbers in a meaningful way.

To start off the week, we spent a lot of time with our books doing research. We researched in both large and small group settings. We read some books together and looked through them to answer questions. Our reading workshop this week was based around our chicken books. As the kids worked in small groups, they went on picture walks. As with our other studies, we spent time after our picture walks talking together as a large group and asking questions. This week we've been learning a lot about the incubation process. Before placing our eggs in the incubator, we looked at them together and talked about the journey our eggs will go on. We were able to use some books to see an example of what the chicks look like inside the eggs at difference stages throughout the 3 weeks of incubation. We've also learned about the importance of caring for our eggs, such as how to appropriately handle them and how to monitor their incubation. We have 11 eggs in there now so we're hoping to at least have a few chicks in about 2 weeks. They should hatch around March 11th.

We also made a countdown calendar for our chickens. Each day a student gets to mark through another day on our calendar as we get closer to the eggs "due date". Along with our countdown calendar, we made a chart of what chickens have, what they need, and what they give. This has given us the opportunity to talk about the importance of chickens, how we can care for them, and the benefits of raising them.

As we've been exploring our fertile eggs, we've also been talking about the fact that eggs come in a wide range of sizes and colors. We found some eggs of different sizes and compared them in a small group setting. We also spent some time talking about the different parts of an egg and a chicken. We cracked an egg open and learned that the yellow part is called the yolk and the clear part is called the albumen. We also learned that the chicks eat these things while inside the egg to gain nutrients and help them grow. Someone asked what was inside the yolk so we experimented a little by stirring the two parts together. We noticed that there was nothing inside the yolk and that when we mixed the two together, the albumen was still easy to recognize as it didn't mix as well as the yolk. As we cracked the egg, we also explored the shell. We noticed that it has a strong soft lining followed by the hard shell. We also noticed a small air pocket inside the soft lining. We learned that this is used to allow the chick to take it's first breath of oxygen once it starts hatching. We discussed that if our eggs do hatch, the chick will probably be very tired from the hatching experience. We also learned that they will come out wet and sticky but will soon fluff up and be covered in feathers called "down".

On Friday, we were able to spent some time with Mr. Brent's class, learning about a project they have been working on. The 2nd graders made replicas of homes in different countries. They each gave us a small presentation as we walked around and asked questions about their projects. The homes they made were amazing! It was great for the kids to get to talk with the 2nd graders and learn how they used different materials to make their masterpieces. It was a great experience for us and we were so happy to be asked to visit.

It's been a great first week of egg exploration and the excitement from the kids makes it even more fun! I'm looking forward to all of our exploring next week. I hope everyone has a relaxing weekend!

Love,
Ms. Rachael


Approaches to Learning:

• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Stand up for rights most of the time.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Seek information by looking at texts, signs and photographs in the classroom.
• Begin to use both pictures and text read aloud as cues to meaning of unfamiliar words.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Show one-on-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.
• Compare the lengths of two objects.
• Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.

We check on our eggs daily to make sure the temperature is correct...

 

We are researchers! We want to be ready to care for our chickens when they arrive...

We are scientist! We've learned a lot about the different parts of an egg and their importance...

 

 

We are musicians!

 

 

 Thank you, 2nd graders, for your awesome presentations!