Going Home

We delivered Lucky and Cookie to their new home today. The class took a field trip to Triple H farm in Florence where we delivered our precious cargo to their new family. They will be living with numerous other chickens, turkeys, and ducks as well as goats, rabbits, dogs, and cats, and kids! It was so good to see them outdoors and exploring the world. A great time was had by all as we saw some real chicken coops and nesting boxes, fed and pet the goats and turkeys, and tried to hold some chickens. What a variety of life on the farm!

Red worms

As part of our worm study, we decided to establish a composting redworm bin and contribute natural fertilizer to the school garden. Our part in the project was to prepare the worm bin. We ripped newspaper into 1 inch strips and added water. This will be the basic medium that our redworms will live in and help them stay moist. We needed 4.5 pounds of newspaper! We prepared for this special project by visiting "The Adventures of Herman the Worm" website posted by the University of Illinois. It helped us calculate how much newspaper and water we would need. When the worms arrived by mail, we studied their bodies and compared them to the earthworms and nightcrawlers we had previously studied. Mrs. Stauffer's Kindergarten added the worms to the bin and will be feeding them for the first few weeks. They add left-over fruit and vegetable scraps to the bin to "feed" the worms. It will take 4-6 weeks for the first batch of compost to be available for us to take out to the garden.

If you are interested in learned more about this project, worm anatomy, or how to make your own redworm composter, check out this link:
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/worms/index.html

Big Chickens!

The chickens have grown quickly and we have determined that Lucky (yellow, born first) is probably a rooster. He is smaller in size, has a larger comb, and few tail feathers. We have determined that Cookie (brown, born second) is probably a hen. She is larger (as most females of most bird species are), has a tiny comb, and has quite large tail feathers. They have both grown great wing feathers and are now trying them out daily. Lucky surprised us last Friday when he flew up to perch on the edge of his box. He just sat there enjoying the view of Kindergarten while Cookie chirped loudly from below!

Growing Up

We have had a wonderful week of petting our new friends, Lucky and Cookies, and watching them grow. It is amazing to see how much they have grown in only two weeks! This week we set up a larger pen for our chicks in the classroom. They stay in their box at night, but come out into their pen during the day. We are taking turns joining them in their pen and learning how to handle them gently.


Today Lucky and Cookie came out into the classroom so the kindergarteners could draw them. We are going to include these drawings with a letter we are sending to Russell Elementary Kindergarten. Russell Elementary Kindergarteners have hatched chicks in their classes as well and we are beginning to correspond with them about our shared interest in chickens!

The Votes Are In!

The votes are in and our two little chicks have names. The yellow chick (now 5 days old) is Lucky. The brown chick (now 3 days old)is Cookie. Welcome to Kindergarten Lucky and Cookie!

Video

I have discovered how to post some video. Turn up your sound so you can hear the chick peeping from inside the egg. This was our first chick as it was busy "unzipping" himself. It's as if it's saying "Look out, world. Here I come!" It took about 30 more minutes to complete hatching. Wow-no wonder it was tired!!!

Surprise!

When chicks hatch they are wet and very tired. They need to stay in their incubator to rest and dry their feathers. As soon as they are dry, they can be moved to their brooder. We spent Thursday morning setting up a brooder for our chicks that had all the basic needs for a living thing: food, water, space, and air. We also added one more thing: friends! Because our first chick was all alone, we put a mirror into the box with it so it wouldn't be lonely.

On Friday, we came to school to find another chick had hatched! This golden brown baby was wet, but very curious about the many faces peering in at it! Our chicks were all due to hatch on Wednesday, but sometimes chicks need a few days longer to incubate. This little guy probably hatched out in the middle of the night. He was beginning to dry by the end of the day, so after school he was moved to the brooder with the other chick. Can't wait to see what happens over the weekend...

Happy Birthday!

Today was hatching day and our first chick arrived! A chick has an egg tooth, a hard point on it's beak, that helps it to poke through the membrane and shell where it has been living for the past 21 days. Our first chick began poking at it's shell at 8:15 this morning. We watched it all day as it peeped and wiggled in it's shell for hours, resting often. This initial pecking is called "pipping". It seemed as if the hatching was not progressing very quickly and by 3:00 the same little hole we saw in the morning was the only evidence of the life inside. As the students left for home, they all stopped by the incubator to say "good-bye" and give words of encouragement to the little chick. I think their encouraging words were heard because when I returned to the classroom after dismissal at 3:10, the chick had made a significant crack! Over the next 45 minutes the chick made a "zipper" around the egg and pushed it's way out. By 4:00, the wet chick had joined the world, loudly peeping all the while! It took about 8 hours of hard work to get to it's birthday! It will spend tonight in the incubator drying and resting. We will began making a brooder for it in the morning.

Out in the Garden

We ended Earth Week by heading out into the Lowell School Helping Hands Community Garden to see what we can find. There are many plants already growing after their long winter sleep. We also found some living things UNDER the soil! After spending a good amount of time digging in the soil, we discovered that we could find earthworms if we dug down deep enough. We will be studying these favorite little creatures in the next few weeks while we wait for our chicken and duck eggs to hatch.
Our afternoon in the garden ended with an impromptu concert from the Lowell school orchestra as they came outside to practice in the sun. Then we came inside and started pumpkin plants for the garden by planting seeds we saved from the pumpkin we harvested and studied last fall. I can't think of a better way to spend the afternoon with my kindergarten friends!

Waiting and Wondering...

We're checking the temperature, filling up the water, watching the eggs turn, and waiting. It is day 16 on our count-down calendar and we can hardly wait! The chicks have another 5 days to incubate. As we wonder what is going on in there, we check our development chart. Wow! These babies are growing fast! Soon they will outgrow their egg shell and join us in the classroom :0)

Exploring the Egg

Today we explored unfertilized chicken eggs. These are the eggs that you buy at the grocery store and will never form a baby chick. We cracked the shell and explored all the parts of the egg. We also learned the terms yolk, albumen, and chalazae. For information about the parts of the egg and their function, check out this 4H embryology link: http://4hembryology.psu.edu/partsn.html

Egg-xercise

Our eggs get their exercise every day! In nature, eggs are turned several times a day by the mother hen while she is brooding. This keeps the babies inside the eggs healthy. We have automatic egg turners in our incubators to turn our eggs for us, day and night. Eggs have a narrow end and a wider end. The head of the chick (or duckling) will grow in the wide end. We have our eggs in the incubators with their pointed-end slightly down so that the babies don't have to stand on their heads!

The digital incubator that we are using has an alarm that notifies us when it is about to turn the eggs. It seems that whomever is near the incubator when the alarm sounds, rushes over to watch the eggs roll. (I find myself running over too!) Who knew that egg exercise could be so exciting!

They're Here!

Our eggs arrived last Wednesday the 7th. We recieved 8 chicken eggs and 3 duck eggs. The chicken eggs are many different colors ranging in white to dark red/brown. We also have two different sizes of chicken eggs. We wonder if they are from two different kinds of chickens...we'll have to wait and see!

Getting started....

We have set up the incubators in our discovery center and we are waiting for them to warm up so that we can fill them with eggs! We will be hatching duck eggs and chicken eggs over the next 3-4 weeks. We have two different incubators. The large incubator is a styrofoam-style incubator that can hold a dozen or more eggs. The smaller incubator is a new digital incubator that can hold three eggs. The incubators will be doing the job of the mother duck or chicken. They will be keeping the eggs warm and safe while the babies grow inside.

Welcome to our blog!

We are set to embark on a new learning adventure as we begin the next unit of study in our science curriculum: animals! We will be studying pairs of animals and comparing their body structures, habitats, and behaviors. We will be using this blog as a means to share our learning with our families and our friends so that all of you can see where our new learning adventures take us! Enjoy the blog with your Kindergartener!