Aalva Class 2015-2016: Our Chicks Are Here!

Hello family and friends!

Our chickens hatched!!! We have had such an exciting week in the Aalva class. When we came into the classroom on Monday we had 3 little eggs with cracks in them. Needless to say we spent the entire day watching those little guys hatch out of their eggs. Our first chicken hatched at 9:05 Monday morning and we named him Matzah ball. Every time someone came into our classroom the kids would get so excited about telling them that our chick hatched! As they watched the chick flop around and learn to walk they made many observations and were very concerned for the baby chick. Some of the comments were “They have a little toother that they use to peck peck peck”; “It’s alive”; “It’s trying to stand up!”; “It’s wiggling it’s wiggling!”

We also had some good questions: “How do we get them out?”; “Is the chick okay?”; “How do you know if it’s a girl?”; “What if they get stuck?”; and “What will we do with the chicks after two weeks?” I loved seeing their compassion for the little baby chicks. They would go up to the incubator constantly just to make sure the chicks were doing okay. The love that everyone has shown for the baby chicks is truly amazing!

After our first chicken hatched we made predictions about how many more eggs would hatch. We had guesses from only one more to all thirteen! At the end of the day Monday we had 5 baby chickens and we weren’t expecting any more. Tuesday morning we went about our day checking on eggs in the incubator but not really seeing any movement and then all of the sudden one popped out! We were so shocked. By the end of Tuesday we had four more baby chicks, making it a total of nine. Rachael and I were so excited and shocked and I know the kids were too. I even had to go out and buy a bigger brooder on my lunch break because the one we had gotten wouldn’t fit nine little chicks after we took them out of the incubator. When Rachael and I started this process of hatching chickens we were told that there was only a 20% hatch rate. That meant that only 2 or 3 chicks would hatch out of our 13 eggs. I still cannot believe that we had a 70% hatch rate!!!

After all of our chicks were put in the brooder we decided to name them. Here is a list of the breed and name of the each chicken:

Dominque – hatched at 9:05am – named: Lucy

Easter Egger – hatched at 3:27pm – named: Daisy

Olive Egger – hatched at 4:36pm – named: Olive

Salmon Favorelle – hatched over night – named: Marigold

Easter Egger – hatched over night – named : Cody

Easter Egger – hatched Tuesday 10:00am – named: Opal

Salman Favorelle – hatched 12:55pm – named: Sammy

Dominique – hatched 2:12pm – named: Matzah Ball

Easter Egger – hatched 4:20pm – named: Peep

This week we wrapped up our study on chicks. We will continue to keep our babies in the classroom until about two or three weeks but we are moving on to a new exploration next Monday. To wrap up our study we decided to do a survey. Since we know so much about chickens we decided to use that knowledge and go around the school asking others if they knew the same information that we did. Some of our questions were: “Can eggs chirp?”; “Can chicks fly?”; and “Can eggs be blue?” We split up into small groups and went around the school searching for people that knew the correct information. When we came back we talked about how many tally marks were in each of our columns, yes and no. We were very surprised to see that not everyone experts like us!

This week was also Rabbi Meir’s birthday. We spent most of the day Thursday creating a birthday book for him. We asked everybody to draw a picture for our book and tell us one thing they liked about Rabbi Meir. Everyone was so excited to give him the book and we literally screamed with excitement when we told him Happy Birthday on Friday. I know he loved the book and all the hard work they put into drawing the pictures and writing the things down that they loved about Rabbi Meir.

Love,

Ms. Michelle

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.
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.
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.

Mathematics: