This is Part 2 of my Duck Life Cycle series, if you missed it, take a look at:
We have had another eventful week in kindergarten and students are still excited to have the duck eggs in our classroom. They check on them everyday and continue to ask questions about them. Here is what we’ve been up to this week!
1. Changes in the Eggs
Our egg candler has been really useful this week as we have been able to observe the changes that have been happening in the eggs. A few of them have developed blood vessels and the embryos have gotten big. It is really hard to get a good picture of the eggs with my cell phone, but you can see the blood vessels at the bottom of this egg. It was so exciting to see that we have been taking care of the eggs properly and that they are developing! We have at least one egg that does not have anything growing in it, but it will be a good learning experience for students to know that not all the eggs will hatch.
2. Learning about Ducks
Of course we are taking this opportunity to learn everything we can about ducks, and we have extended our learning into living and non-living things. We have discussed how we know something is living (it eats, breathes and grows) and the different parts of ducks. We’ve also discussed the different changes that are taking place within the eggs and what parts of the ducklings are developing already!
3. Live Stream
We have set-up a live stream of our duck incubator so that families can share the experience of watching the duck eggs with their children when they are not at school. I am hoping that we will be at school when they hatch, but in case we are not, we will be able to watch it on the computer! It was a bit of a pain to set up the stream as it involved downloading software, setting up hardware and e-mailing people to give me access to things I didn’t have access to on the school computer; but in the end I think it will be worth it to be able to share this with the school community.
This has been such a great experience so far and I love being able to share this with our students. They have a new appreciation for living things and our natural environment that only hands-on learning can give them.
Do you have any hands-on learning activities that you love to do with your students?
3 comments