They are now chickens!!

Here are 2 pictures from my parents...the chicks, I mean chickens', first day outside. My dad said they love it!!

Zoo!

We had a great day at the zoo!!  Again, thank you to everyone who came and helped!!  I only have a few pictures...we were too busy having fun!!!

Bald eagles!

A wallaby and her Joey!!

Learning about animal coverings!

Seeing a rooster 

Field Day!!

We had so much fun on field day!!  Thank you to everyone who came out and helped!!

A few last chick pictures...

Before they left last week, the chicks were getting huge!!  They are now very happily at my mom's house (who LOVES them) and continuing to grow!!!  Here are a few pictures if them on their last day of school!

Camping!

We had a great time camping in the classroom last week!!  We got the fire going, roasted pretend marshmallows, told scary stories, and read books using our flashlights!  The students loved it!!  Vinny stopped by too!!

Chick pictures!!

They're Here!!

We had two chicks hatch today!! The kids were so excited!! One student ran over to me and said, "He's looking right at me!!"

We have two more eggs with cracks, so I expect more babies tomorrow!! I will keep posting updates!

We also decorated the chicks new home...they will have a beautifully decorated cardboard box tomorrow!

Pond Observations

With all of this beautiful weather, we decided to write outside!! We have been working on writing based on observations so we took a trip to the pond and wrote about what we observed! The students did a great job!!!

Chick Update!

We are on day 15 of 21 days!! The students are learning all about chicks am the life cycle of a chicken! We have been learning words associated to chickens and saw the chicks' future home...a chicken coop!!

Eggs!!

We are going to be  hatching chicks this year!!  (Or should I say attempting to...this waiting time always makes me so nervous!!)! I picked up the eggs from Townline Hatchery in Zeeland and got to see some interesting sights! 

We have ISA Brown Chicken eggs...which is a cross breed of Rhode Island Red and Rhode Island White.  My mom is going to take the chicks and wanted a "nice" breed of chicken and a good egg layer and this is what Townline suggested.  They said they are very dependable egg layers, docile, and have a great personality!  Who knew?!

I will keep the blog updated as the process continues!

Eggs waiting to go into the incubators!

Workers loading eggs into the trays.  Behind you can see the dark wood incubators.  Each incubator has 2 windows and holds 30,000 eggs at a time!!  There were about 10-15 incubators in this building!!

A peek inside the incubators!

Ducklings and poults (baby turkeys) ready to be shipped to small farmers!  All the boxes behind are filled and ready to ship with many different types of poultry!

Our eggs, ready in the incubator!!  I numbered them so that it makes it easier for me to tell which eggs have been flipped.  I have to flip the eggs 3 times a day to mimic the behavior a hen would do when on a nest. 

Here is our countdown chart!!  Hopefully in 21 days we will have chicks!!  Wednesday was day 1 for us!  (Although in the past, I have had the chicks hatch on days 19 and 20, so we will see!!)

Our little "Incubation Station!"  We will continue to put up information about chicks, eggs, and incubation as we go! 

Some writings about putting the eggs in the incubators.  They do such a great job of being so accurate with their descriptions and illustrations!