DAY 21, EGG HATCHING DAY!!!

Wow, today has been long and exciting! We had one hatch and the kids went crazy, in a good way!  We had classes all over school viewing, plus a few at other schools in our school system. My own child was in PE when the chicken hatched, the PE teacher said she cried.  I asked her about it later and she said it was tears of joy.  While my class was at PE we had several classes take a "field trip" to my room to view the incubator and chick.  I had several great questions from students in other classes. This is why I love PBL's like this, not only the kids in the class learn other kids learn too!

I did have to change the web cam app I was using due to firewall issues.  I changed to ustream, so check out the link below to follow along and check back later to see how many hatch in all.

   

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cesbrooks

Chick Cam

TECHNOLOGY IS AWESOME!!!

We are on day 20 of the Chicken Haching PBL so we put up a web cam today.  You can actually view live feed by clicking on the link below.  We had some issues with the humidity over the weekend so we will see what effect that had.  My students are super excited and so am I.

We started with 38 eggs.  On Friday I candled the eggs using a homemade candler, thanks to my "egg eggspert".  I had 11 eggs that were basically empty so those were taken out.  We had 27 remaining that I was unsure about so they were all left in.  When we first candled on day 9 (would have done earlier but weekends aren't friendly) we had two eggs that we could actually see them moving!  It was so cool to see!  On day 11 we candled again and the class really got into it.  We had some great journaling that day.

Stay tuned to see the outcome and after the project is wrapped up I will post my PBL plan for you to download.


http://10.25.4.87/video.html

It's Chicken Hatching Time!

     Today my class started a PBL (project based learning) that has us hatching chicken eggs in the classroom.  My students have been anxious to see what the "white box" was in our room.  To introduce this PBL my daughter and I made this video of me at our house.  I have chickens at home and thought it would make for a great tie in.  I will try to post every couple of days showing the progress of the eggs and the work the students are doing to answer the question:

How can we grow chickens to have more eggs to share with Mrs. Brooks' family and friends?

I hope you enjoy the video below and look past my very southern accent!

I had three goals for myself this school year, besides the usual things I wanted to accomplish. They are
1. replace chairs with stability balls
2. get a class pet
3. hatch chicken eggs in class I know these may be strange goals to some, but they are mine.

This post is about the stability balls. Last year was my first year teaching Kindergarten. When searching various sites for different strategies I came across articles about teachers that had done this. I was intrigue by this concept and started to search specifically for others who had replaced their chairs for stability balls. It didn't take me long to realize that I too wanted to do this. I got permission from my principal and then began my own study. I asked my PE teacher if I could borrow a stability ball and then let my class at the time try it out. I started with my most energetic student and went from there. This small scale experiment went well and students were eager to use the ball when it was their turn.

The next step I had to make was figuring out how to pay for the balls. There are school supply companies that sell class sets, but they are expensive. I started looking for grants to help with this cost but after months of looking couldn't find anything. I'm not saying they aren't out there, I just couldn't find one. After praying about the idea came to ask friends, family, and church members if they would be willing to donate some money to fund this very unusual project. I found that I could purchase used stability balls from amazon for around $10. Since prices are so high, that's the cost of a fast food meal. I emailed everyone I knew and within a couple of weeks I had all the balls I needed for my class!

On the first day of school I had chairs ready for the students, because I wanted to have "ball orientation" with them. We talked about what kinds of ways we needed to sit and other things we needed to do to take care of our new "chairs". I had looked at a particular blog and liked the rules she used and decided I would try these to start. I posted the rules and drew pictures as cues. We have now been in school for a month and I LOVE how these balls have impacted my classroom!

There is tons of research as to why it is good to use them, so look for yourself. I'll update mid-year as to how things are going. Below are pictures of my class using these balls.

Special thanks to all those who made this possible!!!!!

CES Tech Zoo PBL