Sunday, May 1, 2016

One of My Favorite Activities of the Year--Hatching Chicks!

I love love love spring!  Not only for the beautiful and much needed warmer days, but also because it is an awesome time to be in kindergarten!  Everything just seems to start 'clicking' with the kiddos this time of year and it is SUCH a fun time to teach them!

And with spring comes one of my favorite activities of the year--hatching chicks!  If you know me at all, you know I love to keep my lessons as hands on and engaging as possible, and it doesn't get more so than this!  Instant engagement from the moment the eggs arrive!

We used to get our eggs through a local university's extension program, so if you are thinking about hatching chicks in your classroom that may be a good place to look in to getting eggs.  However, ours stopped the program last year so we have had to look elsewhere--good thing our principal is married at a veterinarian!  They really came through for us!  I got 7 eggs plus a brand new incubator (from Amazon) for my classroom this year.




Before we even get the eggs, we start learning about them.  We need to know all about them to be able to take care of them right?

First, we discuss how long the eggs take to hatch, and what is happening that we can't see inside the egg.  We read, discuss, and color this little reader:  




We also discuss the need for the incubator and how to care for them since we will be the 'mother hen'.  The students take this job VERY seriously!

We then learn about the life cycle and sequence the development of a chick.










After this, we care for and monitor our eggs!  We keep track of how many days until they hatch and keep a daily Chick Journal to record our learning and observations.




This is one of my favorite entries from this year:




Solid advice! ;)


Unfortunately, this happy spring post has a sad ending....our chicks did not hatch :(
#incubatorprobs

So if you are in the market for an incubator and see this one on Amazon, DO NOT get it!

It stopped working the last few days before the chicks were to hatch--only the most critical days!  The screen on the front said it was on and set to the right temperature, however when I lifted the lid there was no heat--just room temperature.  My teammate used the same one and her eggs did not hatch either.

We had a class talk and while the kids were super bummed, we still had a good learning experience.  We have a very brave, science-loving 3rd grade teacher in our building and she wanted to do a lesson with her class using our eggs.  She put them in baggies and cracked them open to see what was inside.  There were different stages of development they put in order and they invited us to their classroom to see.

While this was not nearly as exciting to the kiddos as actually having the chicks hatch, it did take the idea of what was happening inside the eggs from abstract to reality.  Here they are observing them:



The kids loved to see this--it was not nearly as depressing as it looks in this pic!!  Lol after I posted this pic to my Instagram, I realized this looks like we are mourning our loss at a Chick Funeral!  :)

Our incubators may not have worked but some authentic learning still happened!  All of the activities we used came from my Chicks! Unit.  Click on the picture below to check it out!


https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chicks-Common-Core-Activities-to-Accompany-Hatching-Chicks-1740688



As always, thanks for stopping by and taking a little peak into our kindergarten world!  :)

Up next:  Plants!


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