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:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Show one-on-one correspondence through ten when counting real objects.

  

 Our eggs hatching!

 

 

 

Harry's mom came to read to us! Thank you, Michelle, for our beautiful book!

Working on our birthday surprise for Rabbi Meir...

We love our chicks so much! We wish we could hold them all day long...

Our Purim Celebration!

Hello family and friends!

We have had such a fun week celebrating Purim. We spent the week learning the story of brave Esther who saved the Jewish people from Haman. We've spent time reading books about this story and discussing the importance of this holiday. We also turned our housekeeping center into a costume zone complete with crowns and masks of different Purim characters. We also disguised ourselves as different animals with masks and dress up clothes. The kids dressing in disguise is a Purim custom. It demonstrates the fact that the miracle of Purim was disguised in more natural methods as opposed to an obvious miracle (this is also why the kids wore costumes on Thursday). It was a great week of imaginative play!

We wanted to spend some time this week focusing on the four mitzvah of Purim. The first of these is Mishloach Manot. This is the giving of food to others. To demonstrate this we made our own baskets using paper plates and markers. After folding them into a triangle, we filled them with an apple and homemade hamantaschen that the kids made. After putting food in their baskets, they gave them to a friend in the classroom. As we made these exchanges, we talked about the importance of giving to others and being thankful for what we were given. We also gave extra Tzedakah this week as well as listened to the reading of the Megillah (both mitzvah). The kids made groggers (noise makers) that they shook when the name of Haman was read aloud. We really enjoyed this as the Megillah was read in Hebrew! Another mitzvah for Purim is having a festive meal together. While we didn't have an actual meal (other than our fun lunches), we did eat some special challah during this time (it had sprinkles...a big deal in this classroom!)

Throughout the week, we ended up talking about castles and what they might look like. We thought it would be fun to make our own castles. Each child drew a picture of a castle complete with plenty of details. Before we started drawing, we discussed what a castle might look like and the purposes of it's different features. We also found some pictures of real castles and studied what they were made of and their different shapes. After drawing our castles, we set out different types of building materials in stations. The kids went to work making a 3D versions of their castle. We encouraged them to take their artwork with them and use it as a guide as they constructed their castles. As we built, we discussed the different aspects of a castle such as motes and walls for protection. Here are some things they said about their castles while building...

Harry: "It has to be really dark in the castles rooms."
Max: "I have big legos to make a big castle."
Mariano: "I'm building stairs for my castle with legos."
Ethan: "I have snap-cubes to build a trap for the bad guys in my castle."
Shlomo: "I'm going to make a bouncy house castle."
Van: "I use snap-cubes to build a rainbow castle. It has a boulder on top to get the bad guys."
James: "I have blocks to build a bridge, rising water, and a tall slippery castle so bad guys can't get up. It's King Achashverosh's castle."
Taliah: "I'm using blocks and there is a circle to build up. There are trees and a tunnel to get in the castle."
Maddie: "I have legos to build a pretty cool window for my castle."
Sally: "I'm building purple and pink legos to make a table and I'm going to make rugs. My castle is a rainbow castle."
Kayla: "I use legos to build a porch and a tower and water."
Scarlett: "I used blocks for a castle. It has water and big roofs."

Of course the most exciting part of the week was Thursday (Purim). We loved all the costumes! They seemed to have a great time showing them off to us and their peers. We spent the morning in the synagogue listening to the Megillah reading and then got to play at the carnival. The older children in the school built games for us to play. Each game had an older student there to show the kids how to play and give out tickets. We let the kids wonder around the room playing all the games and when they were done they turned their tickets in for an awesome prize. The kids did a fantastic job with this! We also got to take a ride on a pony this year! I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of our week. Of course they loved it! It was a great experience for them and we are sending out a HUGE thank you to everyone who put it together! I feel that we all learned a lot this week - not just about Purim, but also about the Jewish culture. We took a lot of pictures this week, so I hope you enjoy them!

Love,
Ms. Rachael


Approaches to Learning:

• Reason about events, relationships, or problems.
• Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
• Represent prior events and personal experiences in one or more ways.
• Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social & Emotional:

• Manage transitions positively when told what to expect.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.
• Recognize own feelings and describe them some of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
• Retell one or tow events from a story read aloud.
• Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• Incorporate favorite parts of literary texts into play activities.
• Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.

Mathematics:

• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Locate patterns in the environment.
• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
• Represent simple two-dimensional geometric shapes.
• Associate time concepts with a clock.

I have to start with these 2 pictures...seriously, how awesome/hilarious are these kids!

 

 

Making our groggers in preparation for Purim...

 
 
Preparing our Mishloach Manot for our friends...










 
 
We used our drawing and building skills to construct some awesome castles!






















 
 
Playing dress up in our classroom castle...







 
 
Listening to the reading of the Megillah and enjoying our carnival!...



















 
 
We rode a horse today!...




 































 


 
 

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...

Making Hamantaschen!

 

 

 

Our attempt at an experiment :)

 

 

We love this Spring weather!