And here is where things go when they are retired off of our front page! Oftentimes, we feel like these posts, photos, links, etc. are too good to let go of completely. So this page is our compromise. Enjoy!
An Eggucational Experience
Washington Elementary fourth grade egg hatching education
by "Farmer Kelli" Barram
For the past six years, the Garden and Nutrition program at Washington Elementary has offered fourth grade classes the opportunity to witness the miraculous birth of the domestic chicken. The process starts with me, “Farmer Kelli” (as I have been so titled by the students), securing the incubation equipment needed to provide the sixty or so fertile eggs the environment they will need in order to grow and hatch successfully. This required some grant writing, researching of incubation equipment, on-line shopping and, finally, careful reading of the set up instructions, test runs and general “tweaking”. Then came the hunt for fertilized eggs. As an Urban Farmer, it took little effort to put out a call for fertilized eggs across my “farmers network” and find a farmer willing to offer his fertile chicken eggs for this ongoing project.
Each year, then, I venture a short distance away from the metropolitan Bay Area to visit the supply farm and pick up the eggs. It takes some effort to ensure that the eggs are not overheated or jostled too much as I take them back to the school, but once we’re there, we are ready for the big day during which we’ll set the eggs into the incubators.
Each fourth grader has the opportunity to place an egg carefully into the incubator, and a relationship between student and baby chick begins. Many times, the students name their eggs! I then explain the in’s and out’s of the incubator, how it works, why it works the way it does—as well as the important role the students play in keeping the incubator and all the growing baby inhabitants safe and secure. They are held in rapt attention. All of the fourth graders are enamored with the idea that they have just become surrogate mother hens. The questions are endless: “Where did you get the fertilized eggs?” Will they all look the same? How will we know if they are warm enough? How did they get fertilized? Can we name them? How long will it take? The students learn new vocabulary words: incubate, calibrate, hypothesize, thermometer, insulate, fertile, and so forth. The “hatch down” has begun and the heart of each student becomes “pregnant” with anticipation.
The process of hatching a baby chick takes twenty-one days. Every few days or so, I pop into the classroom and check on the incubator, making sure the temperature is maintained precisely at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, that the humidity in the incubator is kept just so, and that the egg turner and all other functions of the incubator are working properly. At these times, I also field even more questions.
The teachers have been using this experience as a springboard for their other core curriculum subjects—and so students have been doing a lot of reading, writing, and analysis regarding chickens. They have diagrammed chicken anatomy, written expository essays, analyzed climates and habitats, made inferences, done longitudinal observations, made hypothesis and predictions, compared and contrasted the aspects throughout the process, developed empathy for a living creature and so much more. In a manner of speaking, students end up with “chicken on the brain”—and their growing fascination with our yet-to-be-hatched chicks inspires them to ask more questions every time I visit the classroom. The list of questions is endless and the answers not always easy to explain.
By about day seven of the “hatch down,” we give the students the opportunity to see what is going on inside the eggs by holding a flashlight up to them in a completely dark space. (This process, in the chicken industry, is called candling.) We create a make-shift dark room with a small 3’ x 3’ table and a heavy dark comforter. Three students at a time lay on their bellies with their heads underneath the table and blankets, while I very carefully hold the eggs and shine a flashlight under them. At seven days they can see a dark spot and some red spindly veins in each egg. Usually, we also get to see it move. It is a bit like an ultrasound, only very low-tech. The students are amazed! The “ooh’s” and “ah’s” emanate from under the table, creating great anticipation for the students still in line, and everyone is inspired to write and draw about the experience. I must confess, the students are not the only ones who get excited about seeing the developing chick while it is still in the egg. It really is an amazing wonder to behold. The teachers and I are right there along with the students in their awe and wonder—witnessing the miracle of life.
Seven days after the first candling, we do it again and the students get to see how the developing embryo has grown and how much more it moves. Again—the experience is amazing, inspiring, and humbling.
At day eighteen, we’re getting very close to the hatch day, and the students, one by one, remove the eggs from the turner. Three days before the hatch day, the eggs need to lie still, so the chicken inside can orient itself and know where to start breaking the shell. The students take this very seriously and remove the eggs with utmost care.
Finally, the long-awaited day arrives and the first baby chick makes a small hole in its shell. It can take anywhere from 8-12 hours for a chick to complete the process of hatching—beginning with that first peck until it finally thrusts itself out of its shell completely. They watch as each chick starts to peck at the inside of the shell, rests, starts again, and rests again—until, it emerges, wet and slimy, looking a bit like a baby dinosaur. Within hours, it has become an adorable puffball with legs. It is nothing short of a miracle! The students are beside themselves with hope, excitement, and wonder as they wait for the next bird to complete its own escape from the egg.
Once the process starts, it takes three days for the whole batch of chicks to hatch out completely. Unfortunately, some don’t make the journey. Some don’t start. Some start and stop, and some unfortunately hatch, but don’t thrive. As you can imagine, this leads to other questions and some interesting discussion about the ways of nature and survival rates. All in all, we have many more success stories, and the incubator is full of tiny, peeping balls of fluff. I wish I could attach a recording to this description so that you could hear all of the “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” filling the room as the kids’ heart strings are pulled by these amazingly cute little creatures. Amazing, too, is how proud the students feel at having facilitated and witnessed the whole miraculous process.
This project that starts out as a “fourth grade” endeavor never merely includes the fourth graders. The word gets out that there are baby chicks on campus and the whole school community wants to get a piece of the action. Other classrooms coordinate times with the fourth grade teachers in order to come see what’s happening. Moms and dads come early before school, or linger after pick up, to see what it is their kids are so excited about. I also take the chickens “on tour” and bring them to other classrooms for “show and tell.” Students are tardy and absent less frequently when we are hatching chickens than at any other time of the year. The principal even joked, “This is so great for attendance, we should hatch something all year.”
The “hatch” is definitely the culmination of this project, but by no means the end. For several weeks after the hatch, the baby chicks ‘attend school’ with the fourth graders and then go home with me at night. As they begin to outgrow their box, I bring fewer and fewer back to school—and ultimately a small flock ends up visiting only on Fridays and in the garden, instead of the classroom. The chickens end up going to live on a local farm.
Despite all of the extra effort this project requires of my time and resources in my role as Garden Education Specialist, it is all very worth it. This project inspires me to find new and creative ways to engage children in nature’s processes. It is a clear demonstration of how project-based learning enhances the educational process and brings to life the core curriculum.
Not counting my chicks before they have hatched, but loving it when they do,
—“Farmer Kelli”
Washington Elementary fourth grade egg hatching education
by "Farmer Kelli" Barram
For the past six years, the Garden and Nutrition program at Washington Elementary has offered fourth grade classes the opportunity to witness the miraculous birth of the domestic chicken. The process starts with me, “Farmer Kelli” (as I have been so titled by the students), securing the incubation equipment needed to provide the sixty or so fertile eggs the environment they will need in order to grow and hatch successfully. This required some grant writing, researching of incubation equipment, on-line shopping and, finally, careful reading of the set up instructions, test runs and general “tweaking”. Then came the hunt for fertilized eggs. As an Urban Farmer, it took little effort to put out a call for fertilized eggs across my “farmers network” and find a farmer willing to offer his fertile chicken eggs for this ongoing project.
Each year, then, I venture a short distance away from the metropolitan Bay Area to visit the supply farm and pick up the eggs. It takes some effort to ensure that the eggs are not overheated or jostled too much as I take them back to the school, but once we’re there, we are ready for the big day during which we’ll set the eggs into the incubators.
Each fourth grader has the opportunity to place an egg carefully into the incubator, and a relationship between student and baby chick begins. Many times, the students name their eggs! I then explain the in’s and out’s of the incubator, how it works, why it works the way it does—as well as the important role the students play in keeping the incubator and all the growing baby inhabitants safe and secure. They are held in rapt attention. All of the fourth graders are enamored with the idea that they have just become surrogate mother hens. The questions are endless: “Where did you get the fertilized eggs?” Will they all look the same? How will we know if they are warm enough? How did they get fertilized? Can we name them? How long will it take? The students learn new vocabulary words: incubate, calibrate, hypothesize, thermometer, insulate, fertile, and so forth. The “hatch down” has begun and the heart of each student becomes “pregnant” with anticipation.
The process of hatching a baby chick takes twenty-one days. Every few days or so, I pop into the classroom and check on the incubator, making sure the temperature is maintained precisely at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, that the humidity in the incubator is kept just so, and that the egg turner and all other functions of the incubator are working properly. At these times, I also field even more questions.
The teachers have been using this experience as a springboard for their other core curriculum subjects—and so students have been doing a lot of reading, writing, and analysis regarding chickens. They have diagrammed chicken anatomy, written expository essays, analyzed climates and habitats, made inferences, done longitudinal observations, made hypothesis and predictions, compared and contrasted the aspects throughout the process, developed empathy for a living creature and so much more. In a manner of speaking, students end up with “chicken on the brain”—and their growing fascination with our yet-to-be-hatched chicks inspires them to ask more questions every time I visit the classroom. The list of questions is endless and the answers not always easy to explain.
By about day seven of the “hatch down,” we give the students the opportunity to see what is going on inside the eggs by holding a flashlight up to them in a completely dark space. (This process, in the chicken industry, is called candling.) We create a make-shift dark room with a small 3’ x 3’ table and a heavy dark comforter. Three students at a time lay on their bellies with their heads underneath the table and blankets, while I very carefully hold the eggs and shine a flashlight under them. At seven days they can see a dark spot and some red spindly veins in each egg. Usually, we also get to see it move. It is a bit like an ultrasound, only very low-tech. The students are amazed! The “ooh’s” and “ah’s” emanate from under the table, creating great anticipation for the students still in line, and everyone is inspired to write and draw about the experience. I must confess, the students are not the only ones who get excited about seeing the developing chick while it is still in the egg. It really is an amazing wonder to behold. The teachers and I are right there along with the students in their awe and wonder—witnessing the miracle of life.
Seven days after the first candling, we do it again and the students get to see how the developing embryo has grown and how much more it moves. Again—the experience is amazing, inspiring, and humbling.
At day eighteen, we’re getting very close to the hatch day, and the students, one by one, remove the eggs from the turner. Three days before the hatch day, the eggs need to lie still, so the chicken inside can orient itself and know where to start breaking the shell. The students take this very seriously and remove the eggs with utmost care.
Finally, the long-awaited day arrives and the first baby chick makes a small hole in its shell. It can take anywhere from 8-12 hours for a chick to complete the process of hatching—beginning with that first peck until it finally thrusts itself out of its shell completely. They watch as each chick starts to peck at the inside of the shell, rests, starts again, and rests again—until, it emerges, wet and slimy, looking a bit like a baby dinosaur. Within hours, it has become an adorable puffball with legs. It is nothing short of a miracle! The students are beside themselves with hope, excitement, and wonder as they wait for the next bird to complete its own escape from the egg.
Once the process starts, it takes three days for the whole batch of chicks to hatch out completely. Unfortunately, some don’t make the journey. Some don’t start. Some start and stop, and some unfortunately hatch, but don’t thrive. As you can imagine, this leads to other questions and some interesting discussion about the ways of nature and survival rates. All in all, we have many more success stories, and the incubator is full of tiny, peeping balls of fluff. I wish I could attach a recording to this description so that you could hear all of the “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” filling the room as the kids’ heart strings are pulled by these amazingly cute little creatures. Amazing, too, is how proud the students feel at having facilitated and witnessed the whole miraculous process.
This project that starts out as a “fourth grade” endeavor never merely includes the fourth graders. The word gets out that there are baby chicks on campus and the whole school community wants to get a piece of the action. Other classrooms coordinate times with the fourth grade teachers in order to come see what’s happening. Moms and dads come early before school, or linger after pick up, to see what it is their kids are so excited about. I also take the chickens “on tour” and bring them to other classrooms for “show and tell.” Students are tardy and absent less frequently when we are hatching chickens than at any other time of the year. The principal even joked, “This is so great for attendance, we should hatch something all year.”
The “hatch” is definitely the culmination of this project, but by no means the end. For several weeks after the hatch, the baby chicks ‘attend school’ with the fourth graders and then go home with me at night. As they begin to outgrow their box, I bring fewer and fewer back to school—and ultimately a small flock ends up visiting only on Fridays and in the garden, instead of the classroom. The chickens end up going to live on a local farm.
Despite all of the extra effort this project requires of my time and resources in my role as Garden Education Specialist, it is all very worth it. This project inspires me to find new and creative ways to engage children in nature’s processes. It is a clear demonstration of how project-based learning enhances the educational process and brings to life the core curriculum.
Not counting my chicks before they have hatched, but loving it when they do,
—“Farmer Kelli”
Here are some great links:
A Project Hatches in Richmond
(A great article about our Washington Elementary Garden)
Against All Odds: School Gardens Bloom in West Contra Costa
(An article about our Madera Elementary Outdoor Classroom and our organization, West County DIGS)
A Project Hatches in Richmond
(A great article about our Washington Elementary Garden)
Against All Odds: School Gardens Bloom in West Contra Costa
(An article about our Madera Elementary Outdoor Classroom and our organization, West County DIGS)
And here are some fun photos:
