Chick Quadrammas

This week students in our class created "Quadrammas" as one way to show their learning about the life cycle of a chick. The quadrammas are 3D representations of four different stages in the life cycle: incubation, hatching, chick, adult chicken. These projects are coming home today. Below are some photos of the project, which offer a better explanation of what "quadrammas" are! We are almost done with the "All About Chicks" books we have been creating throughout the unit as well as our lapbooks, which are folders containing all of the students' other work and learning from the unit. Those projects will go home next week.

Memorial Day Assembly

This afternoon everyone at UMS gathered in the gym for a Memorial Day assembly to recognize Memorial Day and to learn a bit more about what it is. The whole school said The Pledge of Allegiance and sang the national anthem and many other famous songs about the United States. Mrs. Sorenson's class taught us what many of the important words in the Pledge of Allegiance mean, a guest visitor from the American Legion spoke to us about celebrating Memorial Day, and Marty, one of our school bus drivers, played Taps on the trombone. Below are some photos from today's wonderful assembly!

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Planting Potatoes

Today first grade students planted potatoes for the food shelf! The Colchester Food Shelf is Union Memorial School's neighbor and throughout the year classes have each taken a week to collect non-perishible items to donate to the food shelf. Behind the Food Shelf building there is a potato patch and, today, first grade students helped the food shelf again by planting potatoes in the patch. In the fall of second grade student will return to the potato patch and help dig up and collect the potatoes grown over the summer to be available for donation at the food shelf! Below are some photos of students in our class helping our neighbor, the food shelf, today!

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Chick Farewell

Friday was our final day with the chicks and we ended the day with a send-off celebration! Many family members came to meet the chicks and see how much they had grown. We made chick crafts and put down newspaper on the floor to let a few of the chicks out to visit! Over the five days since the chicks hatched they have gone through many changes! They are bigger, louder, and faster! On Friday we noticed them running and flapping their wings, trying to fly. Many had also lost their egg tooth and started to grow adult wing feathers! They are able to do many things on their own and ready to head home. After school on Friday Mrs. Sorenson brought all of the first grade chicks to the farm at UVM (where the eggs originally came from) where they have more room to grow. What a fun time we all had learning about them here at school!

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4 Winds Day

Thursday was 4 Winds Day at UMS! 4 Winds is a science and nature learning program led by parent volunteers. Parent volunteers come in to classrooms to teach a science lesson about once a month on different topics related to nature in Vermont. Unfortunately I was out sick on this year's 4 Winds Day, but I am posting photos Mrs. Ziter took that day. All students learned about bees during this lesson.

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Chicks Day 4

Here are our chick photos from Thursday!

Chicks- Day 3

This week has been very busy with all of our chick learing going on, so I am slightly behind on my daily chick update! Here are Wednesday's chick photos, including photos of the kids holding a chick, writing about chicks, and working on their "quadramma," which is a 4 piece, 3D model of the chick's life cycle. Those will go home at the end of next week with all of our other chick work!

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Chicks on Candid Camera

The end of a long day in first grade! Such a great photo, I had to share!

Today's Chick Photos!

Here are our photos of the chicks today! Our thirteenth and final egg hatched this morning, which is pretty amazing considering that we had a full hatch and most of the chicks hatched early! We ended up sharing some of our chicks with another class whose hatch was not as big so we have 10 chicks living in our classroom! When the chicks had dried off a bit and were able to walk I transfered them from the incubator into a large tank where they have food, water, a heat lamp, and space to run around! The tank also provides a perfect view for kids to sit and "chick watch!" The chicks will live in this tank for the rest of the week then after school on Friday they move back to the farm at UVM! Tomorrow we hope to be able to take the chicks out, hold them, and let them run around a bit!

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The Early Bird Hatches From the Egg!

Today is Day 20 on our incubation calendar, making tomorrow our "Hatch Day," but we have 6 early birds (pun intended)! When I arrived at school this morning eight chicks had "pipped" their eggs, meaning that they had made their first hole in the hatch process. Last year, after the eggs were pipped, the chicks stuck their beaks out of the holes and stayed like that, peeping and breathing, for a full school day. This year, after pipping, many of the chicks got right to work and by the end of the school day we had 6 fully hatched chicks and several more on the way! We have a total of 13 eggs so we will see how many hatch over the next few days! Below are photos we took throughout the day of different chicks at different stages of the hatch process. The hatched chicks are making lots of noise, learning to walk around, and drying off. By tomorrow they should be fluffed up, running around, and ready to transfer to a large terrarium where they will live for the rest of the week.

Please remember, Friday afternoon from 2-3 visitors are welcome to come meet the chicks before they head back to the farm at UVM!

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Fiddlesticks

Last week Union Memorial School had the exciting experience of meeting a string trio from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra! Our whole school had the opportunity to listen to the trio, named Fiddlesticks, perform several different pieces of music at an assembly in our cafeteria. Below are some photos from the performance!

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Turning the Eggs

We are 8 days in to the incubation of our chick eggs and students in our class have been learning how to take care of them! Each day two students are our "official egg turners" and have the job of rotating the eggs in the incubator carefully onto their other side so that the embryo inside develops properly. We learned that a mother hen turns her eggs underneath her as she sits on them during incubation so we are learning to do the same job in class! Below are a few photos of the eggs in our incubator and "egg turning."

Sharing Our All About Books with Ms. Barnett's Class

In an earlier post I shared some photos of students in our class sharing the All About books they created over the past few weeks. On Friday we got together with Ms. Barnett's class (who had also written All About Books) and students had a chance to share their work with some different friends! Students in both classes chose topics they are "experts" in and are highly interested in then created bound All About books. It was great fun to mix our two classes together and let students showcase their work to friends we don't regularly work with during academic times! Below are some photos of students in both classes sharing with eachother.

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School Budget Vote Tomorrow

Please remember, tomorrow, May 7, is the day for Colchester residents to vote on our school budget. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Kid Blogs

Students in our class have been enjoying writing posts on their Kid Blogs! Today I changed the way in which the Kid Blogs are displayed on my blog to make them more user friendly. Instead of kids going to a tab at the top of the blog, finding their name, then signing in, I created a bar on the right side of my blog with direct links to each student's blog. This way they can click right on their own blog to sign in, or click a friend's blog to leave comments. This also creates an easy way for you (parents, family members) to view and comment on your child's blog as well! The kids get very excited when others read and comment on their blog posts so please do give your child's blog a look and leave them a comment!

Candling the Eggs

Today was Day 3 of egg incubation in first grade! It was our first day "candling" the eggs, a process where we turn out the lights to darken the room, then shine a bright light through the eggs, one at a time, to see the developing embryo inside! We were able to see the air sac at the bottom of each egg, the albumen (or "egg white"), and the yolk with a very small embryo inside when we candled! We will candle our eggs a few more times before the hatch and each time hope to see our chicks getting bigger inside!