Hatching Chicks...A Study of Animal Traits

During the month of May, third graders in room 177 learned about traits of animals.  To help us delve deeply into this exploration, we hatched chicks.  In lieu of a lengthy blog post on this topic, I opted to put together a movie slide show (the first I've ever made)  so that you could see first-hand some of the amazing things that the students experienced in our classroom.

On May 4, Ms. A. drove to Cincinnati to the Mt. Healthy Hatchery to pick up three Buff Orpington eggs whose chicks that had already begun to peck through the shell.  She placed them in an incubator that was plugged into an outlet in her car and drove them back to HSA-DE.  From there, the incubator was placed under the document camera and the image of the incubator was projected on the STAR Board during the day.  Students were given the opportunity to come up to the incubator for a close up view as well.

During the school day, the chicks worked to peck through the shell.  Ever so often, we would see a little bit of activity and then there would be long periods of stillness while the chicks rested.  Hatching is a tiring job!  Students would begin to get very excited when they could hear the chicks chirping!

Unfortunately, none of the chicks had hatched as of 2:15 p.m.  But right at dismissal time, one of the eggs began to really shake, rattle, and roll!  Students were glued to the screen of the STAR Board.  As busses were called, students from other grades filtered into our classroom to see this miracle of life happening right before our eyes.  Approximately 20 students from grades 2-5 sat with baited breath as we watched and waited for the baby chick to hatch.

This was the only chick to hatch while we watched.  By the time Ms. A. arrived at school the following morning, the remaining two chicks had hatched.

Please enjoy the following movie/ slide-show of the development of our classroom chicks.