Clucking and Candling!

Tuesday was day 7 of our hatching journey!

We learned that on the 7th day of growth, the comb begins to grow and the egg tooth starts to appear. The egg tooth is a small, hard cap on the tip of the beak that allows the chick to peck out of the egg. Isn't God amazing?

Earlier this week Mrs. Junck brought in a hen and a rooster! We compared and contrasted hens and roosters, and then we learned more about the life cycle of a chicken. We were even able to gently pet the hen and rooster! It was like Old MacDonald's farm in here!

We candled a few of the eggs in our incubator. Candling shows us if the egg is developing into a chick. First we made our classroom very dark. Using a bright light, we were able to see if there was a developing chick inside the egg or not. Dark, shadowy egg? Chick! Bright, lit up egg? No chick. 

Can you see the dark spot on the lower half of the egg?
That is a developing chick!

We are learning about the miracle of life and have been exploring the life cycles. Ask your child to explain the life cycle of a chicken!

We are so excited for day 21 to arrive! That is when we will eagerly watch for our eggs to begin hatching! Until then, we will continue to pray for our little ones and marvel at the miracle of new life. God is so good!

Chickie Love

We've spent 21 days carefully monitoring our incubator!

This week, we were absolutely elated to experience hatching firsthand! We watched in awe as sweet little babies pecked out of their eggs, fluffed up in the incubator, and were moved to their home in the brooder box. God's new life is miraculous!

We wasted zero time and decided these little fluff balls needed some gentle cuddles. The boys and girls learned they needed to sit while holding a chick, and to keep a hand under their feet as well as lightly on their back. It was such a lovely experience snuggling with our new little miracles!

As a class, we'll be caring for these beautiful chicks until the end of the week. 

It has been an AMAZING few weeks filled with loads of valuable science and language arts lessons. More importantly, however, are the lessons we have learned about new life, respect, patience, and compassion. God's work is truly amazing!

Thank you, God, for blessing us with this experience! We are in truly in awe of your amazing work and beautiful creations!

EGG-citement in Grade 1!

We are nearing the end of our hatching journey! Next Thursday is day 21, when chicks should start hatching!

We've been busily preparing for our chicks arrival! To help guide our learning, we thought about what we already knew about chicks:

Then, we wondered together about what we wanted to find out:

We candled a few of the eggs in our incubator. Candling shows us if the egg is developing into a chick. We made our classroom very dark, and then, using a bright light, we were able to see if there was a developing chick inside the egg or not. Bright, lit up egg? No chick (left). Darker, shadowy egg? Chick (right)! 

In another week, when the eggs have been incubated for 21 days, the little ones growing inside the eggs will hatch. We can hardly wait!

We are learning about the miracle of life and have been exploring the life cycles. Ask your child to explain the life cycle of a chicken!

Lifecycle Craft-ivity adapted from I {heart} crafty things

Joyful Noise & Quiet Surprises

Joyful Noise

This week our room was filled with joyful noise! We welcomed several fresh baby chicks into the world!

The kids were absolutely in awe. We had waited and waited for 21 days, carefully monitoring the temperature and humidity in our incubator. Our eggs had actually become new life! What began as an egg has grown into new life! Isn't God AMAZING?

While some students spent time taking in the new life inside our incubator and brooder box, others tackled the illustrations for a rhyming booklet called "5 Little Chicks". The chicks in our illustrations are made from torn construction paper. The creative juices were flowing!

We made a visual to represent the lifecycle of a chick! But we're stumped ... what came first, the chicken or the egg?

What was extra special to see were the differences between the chicks! Some were yellow, others black, others brown with beautiful blond stripes. God made them all special and unique, just like He made us!

It has been an AMAZING few weeks filled with loads of valuable science and language arts lessons. More importantly, however, are the lessons we have learned about new life, respect, patience, and compassion. God's work is truly amazing! Thank you, God, for blessing us with this experience! We are in truly in awe of your amazing work and beautiful creations!

Quiet Surprises

The children have spent the past two weeks preparing a few very special surprises for Mother's Day! We have many wonderful people caring for us, but we are especially blessed to have our moms in our lives. Spoiler alert: If you haven't opened your child's gift yet, be sure to do that first!

We each took a beautiful photo and then painted a fancy frame!

Aren't these spectacular?!?

We put together very special cards for our lovely ladies, too. We worked for DAYS to get our ideas just right. Several pages of sweet and funny thoughts and pictures fill these little treasure books. Here are a few creative gems from the pages of the students' cards. 

May God bless you and your families this Mother's Day weekend!

Seeds & Spring Chickens

Seeds

Today we had a visit from a quirky character. You see, Mrs. Beliveau didn't return to class after recess. Rumor has it she was spotted at Starbucks. Rather, Dr. Discovery arrived in her place, challenging the students to join her in "seed surgery"!

As part of our Needs of Living Things Unit in Science, the students have recently begun exploring plants. This week's "seed surgery" helped us understand that not all seeds look the same! We were surprised that different fruits and vegetables have different amounts of seeds, too, and that many seeds are eaten. 

So many more hands on investigations are to come as we learn how to care for plants!

Spring Chickens

Our chicks continue to grow! We are well over halfway through the 21 day incubation process. We monitor temperature and humidity daily and are eagerly awaiting the chicks' arrival early next week!

Today we "candled" several eggs from our incubator by placing them up to a bright light. This allows us to see inside of the egg and check on development. Can you see the blood vessels? Can you see the shadow, on the right, where the baby chick is growing? God is so good!

We are having so much fun with our learning!

Egg-citing Week!

Let the adventure begin!

This week we carefully placed 22 beautiful eggs into a warm, humid incubator. We can't bring hens into the school, so the incubator acts as a mama hen, turning the eggs while keeping them warm and moist. Each day we monitor and record the temperature and humidity.

These eggs didn't come from the grocery store, they came from Mrs. Junck's family farm! Mrs. Junck is guiding our learning and hatching. Each week we are looking forward to a virtual lesson from her. This week, we got a tour of her farm, met her many animals, and even heard a story! We got to see "broody" hens, which are mama hens who are sitting on eggs. Our favourite part was hearing the sounds of the farm! Boy, are those roosters loud!

We noticed that the eggs in our incubator were many beautiful colours. They didn't all look the same. Mrs. Junck gave us extra eggs from her hens and suggested we crack a few open to see if the different colours mean the insides are different. We cracked open a brown egg and a white egg, and noticed they looked the same inside. Then we had a really powerful discussion about how WE all look different on the outside, but on the inside, we all have a heart and want to be loved.

We are only three days in and have already learned lots! Who knew a 22 eggs could be so exciting? This is sure to be a wonderful journey as we experience new life first hand!

EGG-cellent Day!

Today our room was filled with joyful noise!

We arrived this morning to over a dozen little chicks who hatched overnight! The incubator was bursting with new life! 

We left our new "classmates" and spent the morning making Pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs! This took lots of patience and creativity, and we did have lots of fun, despite the fact we couldn't bring our chicks along for the experience! Look at our masterpieces!

The chicks remain in the incubator until their feathers dry and they become fluffy, and then they are transferred to a space with dry shavings, food and water, all beneath a heat source. We were able to move several to their new home today!

So many little babies have joined our class! Tomorrow will certainly be filled with many soft fluffy cuddles! Today was truly EGG-cellent!

Drips, Drops, Stripes and Spots

Things we have plenty of in our classroom: 

• friends
• smiles
• silly jokes
• germs
• CREATIVITY!

We put our oodles of creativity to work this week and tackled an art project! 

We've all read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle, but have you ever really examined the illustrations?

Mr. Carle not only wrote The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but he illustrated it, too! He has a unique method for making designed, textured paper and then cutting it into the pieces for his pictures. 

We followed Mr. Carle's paper-making technique. 

First, we painted our paper. We added drips, drops, stripes and spots in every colour!

See? No shortage of creativity in our class! Beautiful designs, boys and girls!

Mrs. Beliveau's mug even got some "creativity" on it too... 

Occupational hazard

We set our papers aside to dry overnight, and then tackled our next project ... clean up!

Thankfully, the boys and girls in our class are always willing to help out. Surprisingly, the art room was nearly sparkling in no time at all!

Could you come clean Mrs. Beliveau's house, please? Can anyone vacuum?

Once our paper had dried, we used tracers to cut out the shapes to make a butterfly. 

A little glue, and ta da! Colourful, Carle-inspired butterflies!

And just when we thought we had wrapped up with chicks ...

Welcome, little guy!

Eric Carle painting project inspired by Deep Space Sparkle. 

They're here! They're here!

Today our dozen eggs arrived! Our journey experiencing new life has begun! 

We reflected on what we knew about chicks already. Here are a few of the students' comments:

"They are yellow."

"They come out of eggs."

"Chicks are fluffy."

"They drink water."

"They live on a farm."

"They grow into a chicken."

We also generated a list of what we wanted to find out about chicks:

This afternoon we examined the life cycle of a chicken by reading several books and making these little crafts (adapted from  I {heart} crafty things) :

Please listen to a student explain the life cycle of a chicken:

listen to ‘Life cycle of a chicken’ on Audioboo

As we eagerly awaited the arrival of our eggs, we prepared the incubator. We plugged it in so it would warm up and added a little water to make it humid. Once the dozen eggs arrived, children took turns gently placing them inside.

Below a student explains the purpose of our incubator:

listen to ‘Incubator ’ on Audioboo

We are only one day in and have already learned lots! Who knew a dozen eggs could be so exciting? Tomorrow the energy level is sure to be through the roof! Here are a few more facts we learned today:

listen to ‘Facts day 1’ on Audioboo