Aalva Class 2015-2016: Chicken Varieties

Hello family and friends!

This week we spent a lot of time talking about the different varieties of chickens in our incubator. First we spent time looking up our chickens on the computer. We looked for images of eggs, chicks, hens, and roosters for each type of chicken egg we have in our incubator (Olive Egger, Easter Egger, Dominque, and Salman Favorelle). Once we found pictures of each type we printed them out and made a matching game. Everyone loved figuring out which images went together and finding similarities between the chicks, hens and roosters for each type. After learning more about each variety of chicken we asked everyone what their favorite type of chicken was. Our goal is for everyone to learn more about the type of chicken they picked and when they hatch each child will be an expert on different types of chickens!

Wednesday Ms. Rachael and I decided it was time to check and see how our eggs were doing in the incubator. We decided to candle our eggs and get a glimpse at what is going on inside some of our eggs. We only checked three eggs, but of those three eggs they all had signs of chicks developing inside!! Now not all of our eggs will fully develop but it was great to see that something was happening. We are still counting down the days until they hatch and honestly I cannot wait until the 29^th gets here.

Thursday we did an “eggsperiment” or at least we tried...We tried to do the egg in a bottle experiment using a boiled egg, strips of folded paper, a glass bottle, and a match. Supposedly when you place a piece of paper in the bottle, drop the lighted match in and place the egg on top the egg will get sucked in to the bottle! Well we tried multiple times using different kinds of paper and I think we went through about 20 matches, but it didn’t work. This was probably because our bottle was a little too small. We used this experiment as a teaching point to explain that scientists often fail and that’s okay. Scientists keep trying to use different variables, which is what we did. After our experiment failed multiple times we hypothesized different things we might be able to do to make and it and we came up with some good theories. Even though it didn’t work out I know we all still had fun!

The Jewish holiday of Purim is next Thursday and we have been getting ready for the holiday in our class. This week we made Hamantaschen! First we watched a short video during Torah time with Morah Devorah on how to make the Purim treat. Then we set to work on making our cookies. Some of us chose to add jam and other chose to add chocolate to their cookies. We also started making our Mishloach Manot (Purim Gift Basket) to exchange with friends on Purim. On Purim we will dress-up in costumes, listen to the Megillah (story of Ester), exchange our Mishloach Manot, ride horses (yes, that’s right real horses!), and play carnival games made by the fifth graders!

Love,

Ms. Michelle

Approaches to Learning:

Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
Show curiosity in an increasing variety of actives, tasks, and learning centers.
Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
Understand that a task can be accomplished through several steps

Social & Emotional:

Use classroom materials responsibility, most of the time.
Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.

Language & Literacy:

Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
Incorporate favorite parts of literacy texts into play activities.
Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
Display curiosity and interest in learning new words.

Mathematics:

Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.

Learning more about our different types of chickens...