Chick It Out!

"Eggsactly" what is going inside there?

Have you ever wondered what a chick looks like inside an egg on each day of its 21 day incubation period? We used chickscope to check out real pictures inside fertilized chicken eggs and MRI (magnetic resonance images) from the outside. It's amazing!

     

We have just finished up a chicken life cycle unit in first grade. Out of 15 eggs, 4 hatched. It was interesting to see that even adults were surprised when they realized that not all chicks are yellow. In fact, none of ours were! We had one tan chick, two black chicks, and one grey chick. They were a hit at our Healthy Children Healthy Planet  event, as were the three grown hens we borrowed from our Garden Resident.

The NJ Core Curriculum Science Standards are easily met by our animal and plant studies. We plant different species of vegetables in our school garden (the largest public school garden in the state of NJ) and observe them from seeds to flowering plants.

• 5.3.P.D.1 requires students to use observations of change in animal appearance over time in a life cycle.
• 5.3.2.D.1 requires students to compare offspring with their parents.
• 5.3.2.D.2 requires students to recognize that many species of the same animal exist.

Our kindergarteners learn about the life cycle and species of a frog, while second graders learn about the life cycle of a butterfly. By the end of second grade, they can classify animals easily into birds, amphibians, insects, mammals, and reptiles. I often use this game as an informal assessment. It's SmartBoard / Promethean Board friendly too!  If you really want to challenge your students, use a triple Venn diagram. I give students 3 pictures of animals in the class (lion, tiger, bear = mammal; ant, bee, butterfly = insect, etc.) and this makes them prove how they know they belong to that class, or if they didn't already know, they discover it!

Here is an awesome chick contraction game to play!

For more student websites, teacher resources, and lesson plans / worksheets on this topic, visit my website: https://sites.google.com/site/missabsc/home

Chicken Fest!

For ideas on a Chicken Fest, check out the LessonPlansSOS blog!