How Exciting!...We're Hatching Chicks. 20/01/16
How exciting!...we’re hatching baby chicks.
We have been very excited over the last few days at nursery! On Tuesday morning we talked about some very special visitors who were coming to the nursery and then on Tuesday lunchtime a lady came from Happy Hens with a very special delivery!
She bought with her 10 eggs, which were going to hatch into chicks in the next few days…how exciting!
She gave us lots of instructions about how to look after the eggs whilst they were getting ready to hatch and how to look after the chicks once they had come out of their egg shells.
The children had lots of really good ideas about how we could look after them. We had to keep the eggs warm (at 37 degrees) just like a mummy hen would. In Bear group the children suggested using blankets, a hot water bottle or even sitting on the eggs ourselves to keep them warm…what brilliant ideas!
Luckily the lady from Happy hens brought an incubator with her to keep the eggs at just the right temperature.
The children have been watching very carefully over the last day to see changes to the eggs.
This has been a wonderful experience for the children to see something very special. It has brought about some wonderful discussions and problem solving as well as giving us the opportunity to introduce lots of new language like hatch and incubator . The children have also been looking at lots of pictures of the different stages of the chickens life so they know what to expect when they come out of the eggs and looking also at some non fiction books to find out more about what will happen.
During the day today the children watched as the first 2 chicks began to tap the egg shell with their little beaks and make a tiny hole in the shell. Then at around 4pm the first chick slowly pushed its way out of the egg…wow what a wonderful sight to see. Although the children had gone home we managed to capture some of it on video to share with everyone and we are confident that tomorrow there will be more hatching for all the children to see.
Over the next few days when all the chicks have hatched (and they are dry, yellow and fluffy) we will be feeding them on chick crumb and giving them some water in a special water bowl. We will also be able to look more closely at them out of the incubator and also stroke them. We have already been practicing using our kind and gentle hands, in preparation for this special moment and we know that we need to wash our hands after we have been handling them.
This kind of experience is very important for our children. Not only is it fantastically exciting and awe inspiring, but it also helps them to learn about the importance of living things and how to be kind and take care of them. It also helps the children to be aware of their own health and safety when we reinforce kind touching and hand washing.
For more information about the Happy Hens Farm, please follow the link below
http://www.thehappychickcompany.co.uk/chick-hatching-at-schools.html