Chick iMovie

Here is an iMovie I created documenting the life cycle of our chicks as it took place in our classroom!It has also been posted to YouTube so that other classroom teachers and students beyond our school can view it!

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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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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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."

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!

Our Chick Unit Begins!

Today was a very exciting day as it marked the beginning of our first grade "Chick Life Cycle" Unit! This morning students in our class watched as Nurse Kelly and I cleaned and labeled 13 fertilized chicken eggs to set in an incubator in our classroom. Starting tomorrow students will begin to help turning the eggs in the incubator three times each day as the embryos inside grow into chicks! Throughout the month of May first graders will learn all about chick development and hatching becoming "chick experts." Around May 21 we will expect to see our eggs hatch! Below are photos of our very first day. Stay tuned for many more photos throughout the month!

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