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!

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

Up next:  Plants!

Beautiful Butterflies!

Happy Spring!


I cannot believe how close it is to the end of the school year!  We are in the home stretch!!  So close, yet so far....

Not only do I love this time of year because summer is approaching, but also because we do life cycles in our classes.  We do chicks every year, and have added in frogs, butterflies, and plants in recent years.  It is one of the most engaging times of the year since we actually get to have chicks, butterflies, and plants in our classroom!  It is so fun for the students to actually see what we are learning with their own eyes.  It is no longer an abstract concept--they want to know EVERYTHING about our new 'pets'!  Therefore, instead of me leading the investigation and research, STUDENTS are asking the questions!  WIN!

This year we started with butterflies.  We actually started VERY early with butterflies....as in our caterpillars arrived in February!  Oopsies!  They were delivered on a Friday weeks before we were expecting them, so my teaching partner and I spent our plan period that day frantically changing the next week's lesson plans and getting our butterfly unit ready instead (Sorry Dr. Suess!  We will celebrate you next year, we promise!)

All in all it was huge a success though!

I have heard of a few places to order these from.  We order ours from NatureGifts.com.  The kit with 5 caterpillars and a butterfly net is $19.95, and then to reorder just the caterpillars each year is only $14.95.
 
The students were ecstatic when they first saw the caterpillars.  They love to watch them.  This is what one student chose to do almost every day for early finisher time.

It makes my teacher heart SO happy when they are so engaged! 

When they first arrive, they are in a cup that has their food at the bottom and are pretty tiny at first:

Caterpillars work great to have in the classroom because they change so quickly.  Each morning the students were so excited to go see how the caterpillars had changed.  We kept daily journals where they write and draw about them each day and write what life cycle stage we are in.

I love keeping journals because it gives them a purpose for their writing.  I see growth in writing simply because of the effort they are putting in due to their interest in the topic.

Within a week or so the caterpillars are HUGE.  And I'm going to be honest with you....pretty gross. 

And they just get grosser and grosser (I know that's not a word but it felt like it fit here).  Students always want to know what that 'stuff' at the bottom of the cup is and if it is their 'poop'.  One of kids in my teaching partner's class made this journal entry one day:

I died laughing!  Hilarious!

When we first got our caterpillars, we decided we needed to know ALL about them if we were going to take care of them!  So we started by reading an information book that I made.  It teaches all about butterflies--what they are, what they eat, parts of a butterfly, their habitat, etc.  It has really pretty pictures of butterflies that the students love.

This is an example of a page from the book.  I project it on my screen and we read and discuss together.

We then spent the next couple weeks learning all we could about parts of caterpillars/butterflies, life cycle, etc. and doing fun butterfly activities as we watched the caterpillars go through their life cycle.

Within a couple weeks, the caterpillars had formed chrysalises.

When the caterpillars have all formed their chrysalises, you move them to the net and wait for the butterflies to emerge.  This is where the waiting gets long for kiddos.  It seems like forever before the butterflies emerge!  (In reality it is 1-2 weeks.) 

Since we had gotten our butterflies WAY early, the timing was off---our butterflies emerged during our spring break!  So sadly, the students did not get to see it.  However, they were VERY excited when they returned to school and saw the butterflies in the net!

We kept them for a couple days to observe and journal about them.  Then we let them go at recess one day.

Even with all the craziness and surprise delivery, I would say our butterfly unit was a success!  The students learned so much and had so much fun.  I am still amazed at their vocabulary when talking about the butterflies!

We used my All About Butterflies unit.  It is perfect for a K-2 butterfly study (with or without actually having butterflies in the classroom).  Every activity you saw above plus SO much more is included. 

Click on the picture below to check it out!

Thanks for taking a peek at our Spring!!  Up next--Chicks!!