Chick, chick, chick, chick chicken...lay a little egg for me...

Our Year 5 children had the experience of becoming parents in the first half of this term. As part of their Amimal Life Cycle unit in Science, fifteen eggs moved into their classroom. They were housed in an incubator with a warming light and lots of comfort. After 21 days there was enormous excitement when the children arrived at school to find the first evidence of a hatcher!!!! Slowly, and clearly with lots of effort, the first little bedraggled chick emerged. There were tears in eyes and lots of ooooooing and ahhhhhhing! 

Over the next three days another six chicks emerged. Mrs Lettsome even had to help one of the chicks out of their egg as, after over several hours and clear discomfort, she felt that the little fluff ball would probably not make it out! The class became parents to a total of six chicks who, when old enough, will be moving into our pet pen down in Early Years.

The children did a whole range of learning activities linked to this experience including daily studying of the development happening inside the egg, seeing live pictures of what the chicks looked like throughout the development, weekly journal entries on the process, and on hatch day actually watching the chicks come out of their eggs! The children also enjoyed opening up the eggs at the end of the week that didn’t hatch as they could see partial development and make scientific guesses as to when they had stopped their development. It was also an experience enjoyed by much of the rest of the school who visited, amid a lot of shhhhhhh-ing from the Year 5 children!