First Grade Funtastic: chicks

Showing posts with label chicks. Show all posts

Friday, April 11, 2014

Five for Friday Linky Party ~April 11

Hi! I feel like a horrible blogger lately! It's been awhile since I last blogged. We've had some pretty big stuff happening here.

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share 5 things about my week!

1. My BIGGEST news and current excitement in my life is that I am going to be teaching kindergarten next year! I am sooooo excited about this! I taught kindergarten 15 years ago when I was a brand new teacher. I then looped to first grade with my k class. I went back to kindergarten to pilot all day kindergarten and then landed in first again! That has been where I have been for the past 11 years. Our district will be switching from 1/2 day kindergarten to all day kindergarten next year. I was excited and put in my request to transfer down. I will miss first grade so much! There are so many things I love doing in first grade (chicks, gingerbread man, Author's Tea, teaching my kids to be readers and writers and seeing the huge growth). I will miss my team the most but will be working with an amazing team next year too! This week construction started on our school. The new kindergarten rooms are being built! Whoo hoo!!

This area is all fenced off and the 4 new kindergarten rooms will be here.

It's crazy how these boards can make the inside of the school look so dark. I can't wait to watch the progress of our new home away from home! ;)

I am also sooo excited that I get to attend the Wild About Kindergarten conference in two weeks. Info here. I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from Deanna Jump over at Mrs Jumps Class. I am excited that I get to actually meet her and get more ideas from her.

2. We started our chick unit this week. We have done so many things in our class related to chicks.

We set up our incubators and added the eggs on Thursday and Friday this week.

I have an old Styrofoam incubator that I couldn't throw away. I use this to put extra eggs in in case one of the incubators fails...and we need to transfer eggs over. You really can't see inside it...but it still works. Our baby chicks are due on April 30th and May 1st! I can't wait. I LOVE this unit and will miss it next year.

We have a scale to weigh the chicks after they are born.

I have a nest with a "chicken" sitting on it. The kids thought the eggs were real at first. We talked about how a chicken has to sit on her eggs to keep them warm for 21 days. They have to turn the eggs so they don't stick to the shells.

We made our own nests.

I gave the kids a round, plastic container. They cut paper to make their nest.

We then added Styrofoam eggs from the The Dollar Tree.

The kids took their eggs home. They need to keep them safe for 21 days. They have to turn their eggs every day. On May 1st, they will bring their nests back.

Hopefully, if they have taken care of them....and bring them back...chicks will "hatch" from their eggs.

The kids love having these stuffed chicks sit at their desks with them while they are doing work. They earn them sitting at their desks by being really quiet, hard workers.

These eggs show what the chicks look like each day as they are growing.

This chick will be used for Morning Meeting. The person that is sharing will hold it.

I have tons of things in my Chick Life cycle unit. You can find it HERE!

$Lifecycles: Chicks Math and Literacy Unit #2 ~ Common Core$

I have free word wall words HERE!

Life Cycle of a Chicken: Word Wall Words

3. We started our poetry writing this week. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE having kids write poetry. Every year we do "LOVEY" activity. You can read about it in this post.

We made popcorn and used our five senses to write about making popcorn. I used this fantastic product by Susan over at Thank God Its First Grade.

You can find it HERE.

4. Our Student Council had a NEON day today. Everyone wore neon clothes. I had some sunglasses that I was going to use at the beginning of the year with my kids...but I never had a chance to do the project I was going to do. So, today, I thought it was fitting that each kid got a pair of sunglasses.

They all looked so cute and BRIGHT in their neon clothes.

I even wore tons of neon and painted my nails in glow-in-the-dark neon nail polish. The kids thought it was so cool.

They also loved my bright socks!

5. My husband and I finally moved our treadmill out of the garage and up the stairs. It has felt so good to run on it again. I have 2 5k's coming up soon and need to get training for them.

That's about all for now! I hope you had a wonderful week!

Sara

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Chicks hatching, Farms and Lifecycles

Ohmiword!!! It's been an exciting day in my classroom. We had our first chick hatch and to be honest...I was surrrrprised about it!!!! We put the eggs in our incubator on April 10th late in the afternoon. So, technically tomorrow afternoon will be 21 days. The thing that surprised me the most about this little chick is that he was in my white, Styrofoam incubator. This is an incubator that gets the chicks that are "questionable". In other words, I am one step away from throwing them out because when I candled them I really didn't think they would make it. They stay here until the other ones hatch and then I get rid of all the extra eggs. Last night I was in my room working late and I heard some chirping. I thought it was just the birds outside singing. I checked my clear incubator and saw nothing. So, I left school and never thought of it again. This morning I heard more chirping. I looked in the incubator and saw nothing. I went to the white foam one and TWO eggs had pips in them. I was shocked! Lucky little chicks were spared. I moved the eggs to the clear incubators so that we could watch them hatch. (This post has LOTS of pics...sorry!)

My boys came with me to school this morning and they sat and watched the pip.

This is what we saw from early morning until lunch time. There was NO change ALL morning.

During the end of my math lesson I spotted some movement in the egg. I told the kids to put everything away and this is what we saw. We watched for 15 minutes. I had my document camera on the incubator so we got to watch it all on the smart board.

This little Chicky hatched RIGHT before we had to go to specialist! We were EXCITED!!!

We came back to the room and filled out a birth announcement and filled out a graphic organizer and then wrote about the chicks.

We also sang "Happy Birthday to the chick and had a birthday treat!

It was a great day!!! :) Some of my first graders said that this was their best day in first grade.

After school my boys and hubby helped me decorate our first grade cluster for our upcoming SPAC (academic night). We decorated it in a farm scene because we will have our chicks on display. Each class chose an animal from my TLC Lessons book that I bought. My boys and hubby helped make the barn and hang everything. This is what our cluster looks like now...