THE EGGS HAVE ARRIVED!

The eggs have arrived to room 411 direct from the farm!  The children are excited and the teachers are excited. I am not too sure how excited the chicks are yet, but I bet they can't wait to meet us.  We have taken lots of pictures so we can revisit this experience anytime we want to and so all of our friends that have been out sick this week can see what we have been doing while they have been home getting better.  We have lots of pictures to share and some video too.  We hope you enjoy this adventure.  The chicks should hatch in about a week.  Hopefully some of them will wait to hatch until the children are there to witness the event.  If we are lucky enough to be there we will video it and post it on the blog.

Here are the eggs.  Ms. Linda brought these to our classroom.  They came from the farm and had to be kept in this cooler so the eggs would stay warm until we could get them into the incubator.

Here is a close up of one of our eggs.  We are going to candle them so we can see if a baby chick is inside.

Ms. Sarah adds arrows and X's on the eggs so we know which direction to rotate and roll the eggs.  We have to do this 3 to 5 times a day.  The mommy chicken does this when she sits on the eggs at the farm.  This keeps the eggs warm (around 100 degrees).  Ms. Sarah does this since the mommy chicken has to stay at the farm.  The chick eggs have to be rotated under the light bulbs in the incubator so they don't get too hot or too cold.  Ms. Sarah makes a great mommy chicken!

The thermometer lets us know that the incubator is just the right temperature for the eggs.  The pan of water keeps the air moist.  This is just the right environment for the chicks to finish developing until they hatch.

Here are all 12 of our eggs.  Each has a different color X on them so we know which egg belongs to which chick when we candle them.

Ms. Sarah and the children start making the egg chart so we can track and name the chicks in the eggs.

Here is the chart before we name the chicks and candle the eggs.  We hope all 12 eggs have been fertilized and have baby chicks in them.  We will find out very soon.  We will post all of the chicks names when all of our friends are healthy and back to school.  Each child gets to pick a name so we are going to wait until every child gets to name an egg/chick before unveiling the names.

Ms. Sarah gets ready to take us into a dark room with the eggs so we can "candle" them and look inside to see if they have baby chicks in the eggs.  All of the children are very excited.  Some of the children are a little bit confused because they have never done this before.  This is a great learning experience and a wonderful opportunity to expand vocabulary.

Ms. Sarah uses a projector with a very bright light bulb to look inside the egg.  The projector has been modified to make the beam of light very small and focused.

Here is the first video of Ms. Sarah candling the first set of eggs with two children.  The video gets very dark but you can hear great conversation with the children.  If you look closely you can see some movement within the egg.  I have to admit we still find this just as exciting as the children when we get to see the movement of the baby chicks inside the eggs!  In some of the videos you can see the blood vessels also.

The children get up close and are really involved in investigating the egg and the movement inside the egg.  The room is very dark and the children can see inside the egg but the flash on the camera makes it look like the lights are on.  This seems to be the first moment that the children make the connection that something alive is inside the egg and will try to come out soon.

This is the second video.  It is shorter but the excitement shown by the children is priceless!

 

We have rearranged the classroom to create an entire space devoted to the observation and documentation of the egg hatching and baby chick project.  The children have access to books, writing supplies and comfortable seating so they can watch the eggs and hopefully watch them hatch next week.  The children can come over anytime during the day and observe and document their observations.  After the chicks hatch the children will be able to watch the chicks for the next week or two and observe the changes the chicks go through.  We will write more about that in another post.



These children are drawing eggs and writing letters to the baby chicks.  This activity was spontaneous which is what makes this type of learning so important.  These children WANT to write and want to record what they are experiencing and that is what creates lifelong readers and writers.  Writing activities must be meaningful and relevant in order for children to be interested and excited about writing.

This is another example of a child writing.  This child used a book in the egg watching area AFTER he candled an egg to learn more about what was going on inside the egg.  He was doing research to learn more and he did this independently.  This was the page he found and wanted to talk about.  About 30 minutes later he brought this picture to me and asked if he could hang it up on our chick art wall.  Even though he no longer had the book out, I knew immediately what he had drawn!  I was so excited.  Representational drawing is a critical skill children need to develop but often do not have the opportunity to practice.  It will be interesting to see how the children's drawings develop over the next few weeks as they learn more chicks and experience more during this project.  One way we can document how much the children are learning is by observing and gathering evidence showing how much detail is emerging in their drawing/writing.



Welcome to Egg Central.  This is the area we created for the children to observe, record, relax, draw, watch and display their art work/writing.  The children are spending a lot of time in this area.  The area is large enough that all of the children will have room to watch the chicks hatch when the time comes.  I will take pictures of each component of this area and detail what the purpose is as it relates to child development in the next post.

 

In the last picture this child wanted to start creating a new home for the baby chicks when they hatch.  She was very excited to share her building with us.  Even though we could not keep the building and had to explain that the baby chicks would climb out of it, she asked if we could take a picture.  She wants to keep practicing and she wants to make a play house for the baby chickens when they hatch.  We are going to keep working on this project and will keep taking photos and see where this leads for this child.



Playing in Puddles

Today we played in puddles. When it snows, we play with snow, when it rains, we play in puddles. I remember doing this as a child and I think children do not get enough opportunities to do these things in today's fast paced world. We took out orange cones and blocked off part of the parking lot that had puddles from the mornings rain showers. The children took off their shoes and rolled up their pant legs. We talked about being safe (Paws Laws) and staying inside the area marked by the cones. We worked on skills such as jumping with two feet, following the leader, balancing on one foot, running, galloping and skipping. We also worked on expanding our vocabulary by describing how the sidewalk and parking lot felt on our bare feet (smooth, rough, bumpy, warm, cold). We talked about how the water felt (wet, cold, warm) on our feet. We talked about making splashes, ripples and footprints. This is an example of learning through play. Many cognitive, social, physical and language skills were explored and practiced during this play activity. Children learn best through play. They stay engaged longer, remember the skills better and expand on the activity independently far better than when they are just drilling skills or working on worksheets or flashcards. We hope these pictures help to give you a glimpse into the fun and learning we experienced today.

Getting ready to go play in the puddles.

Feet, prepare to get wet.

Footprints and Shadows

Ask open-ended questions like, "where does the rain come from?" and "where does it go?".  This encourages your child to use new vocabulary words, use more complex sentences and think and reason when answering your questions.  Open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with a "yes" or "no" response.



Ready, Set, Go!




Following the Leader



Friendships are often formed during the quiet times of discovery and exploration.

Puddles aren't just for your feet, sometimes you need to use your hands to really explore the world around you.

Poetry in Motion

Blast Off!

One of my favorite pictures of the day.  The purposeful stride of the child walks as he walks through the puddle exploring the world around him, the shimmer and shine of the sun on the water and the tree reflected in the puddle.  A child's world is truly a remarkable place isn't it?



Ripples in the water.  Ripples was one of the new words we learned today.  When you jump into the water circles will form around you.  It was neat to watch.



SPLISH, SPLASH.  These were fun words to use today.

icebergs and glaciers

These pictures are not in chronological order because this activity lasted for several days and morphed as the snow fell and the freezing temperatures helped the snow and ice refreeze the ice and water each night when we put the sensory table back outside at the end of each school day.  This activity can be done at home by putting snow into a dish pan or bucket and letting your child play.  When the snow starts to melt put the bucket back outside overnight.  In the morning fill the bucket back up with snow.  Dump the bucket of snow and compacted snow/ice from the day before into a bigger bucket and let your child continue to play.  Repeat this process for as long as you like.  Each time the snow freezes, melts, refreezes and you add more to the refrozen ice pack more layers are added to your homemade iceberg.  You can also cut the iceberg in a half and use a magnifying glass and let your child view the different layers of ice.  You can also add a small amount of food coloring to the water before setting it out to refreeze to show the different layers of water freezing and layering.  The children were very interested in this activity and it lasted for almost two weeks.

We added Arctic animals and Native American people to our ice pack for dramatic play and nature science.

In the background we placed pictures of glaciers in the ocean so the children could see that only a small part of a glacier can be seen above the water and the majority of the glacier sits below the water where it is hidden.

The children started to create craters and caves as we began to let the iceberg melt during the day and refreeze outside at night.  We would add more snow in the morning when we brought the sensory table back inside when school started.

The children stated to create habitats for the animals around day 3 of the experiment.  We started talking about hibernation, why some animals do not freeze in such cold environments and that even though polar bears have white fur they actually have black skin.



Each day the iceberg takes on a new shape depending on how much snow the children add on to the base and how much melting and refreezing has happened the night before.  The children has also started to add some blue coloring to the melted water before they set the sensory table out at night to refreeze.  They noticed that in the pictures of the glaciers hung up by the sensory table the glaciers seemed to have blue layers and they wanted to create that in their glacier so they started to add blue water to their iceberg.  They are enjoying the results.



Exploring the ice world!



I have to admit this is my favorite picture.  It looks like snow art.  As much as I am looking forward to spring, birds, flowers and green on the trees again, this picture reminds me of a winter wonderland.  This picture is also a great seek and find activity if you print it and ask your child to point out the different animals.  Try it.

POLAR BEAR!