I miss you all! I hope you are having a wonderful summer! :)

Have a Great Summer!

I had such an amazing year with all of you and I wish you the best of luck in grade three! Remember to keep working over the summer (especially reading)!!! It is important to practice so that you can do well in grade three. Thank you for all the laughs this year - you were the best class ever! :)

Here is my mailing address and e-mail address for those of you that want to keep in touch:
Cheryl Roberts
504 Brackley Point Road
Charlottetown, PEI
C1E 1Z3

cherylroberts@live.ca (my caroberts@edu.pe.ca e-mail should continue to work as well).

Enjoy the summer!
Mrs. Roberts :)

Tomorrow's Field Trip

Just a few reminders for tomorrow's field trip:

• If you are planning on coming as a parent chaperone you will need to pay admission at the movies and will need to find your own transportation. Thanks!
• The movie starts at 10am. Kids' packs are provided as part of the $10.
• We will be travelling to Victoria Park for a picnic lunch. Your child needs to bring a packed lunch with him/her. Please ensure that nothing requires the use of a microwave.
• Our afternoon will be spent at Victoria Park for playtime. We will not be going in the pool/sprinklers, so a bathing suit/towel is not necessary.
• Please make sure that you send sunscreen for your child as we will be outside for the whole afternoon, when the sun is very hot. Bug spray might be a good idea as well.
• There is no water fountain at Victoria Park (that I know of), so please send a bottle of water with your child.
• We will return to the school in time for dismissal. All children will be sent home on the bus as usual, unless I have been told otherwise.

It's going to be a great time! See you tomorrow!

Video of the chicks!

We let Salt and Pepper out while we cleaned their home! :) They like to explore! Don't mind Ms. MacKinnon and I chatting in the background!

More Pictures of Salt & Pepper

Today we bid farewell to our chicks, Salt and Pepper! They are going to a farm where they will be well looked after. One of the grade 8 students has adopted them and has promised us that he will take very good care of them.


As you probably already know, our chick in the brown egg did not make it. He fought a hard battle, but for some reason was not able to fully hatch out of his egg. As we told the children, it was nature's way of doing what was right for the chick. In most cases, if the chicks are too weak or have a physical deformity, they are not able to hatch. If you help them to hatch (which is not recommended), they will probably die soon after. Our other white silkie egg did not end up hatching at all (it never started). However, we are very happy to have hatched two beautiful silkie chickens!


Here are some pictures from our first few days with them!

Ms. MacKinnon holding her favourite chick, Pepper!

Day #1 - letting them pet them for the first time!

Out for a walk around the classroom while their home is being cleaned.

1 Day Old

Pepper is coming to get me!

Could they be any cuter?? :)

We took some time to explore the insides of the broken shells. These shells were excellent homes for Salt and Pepper as they grew and developed over the 21 days. It's hard to believe that they fit in there!

You can see the blood vessels (we were able to see this when we candled). Some of the yolk in this egg was not absorbed by the chick and you can see it in the egg. Normally the chick would eat the entire yolk before hatching.

This egg was much cleaner! Still lots of blood vessels!

Out for a morning stroll on the mat!
2 Days Old

Today was the day the children have been waiting for since they hatched! Today we let them hold the chicks! It was impossible for me to get pictures of everyone, because I had to help out when the chicks tried to climb out of their little hands! I was able to capture a couple of good pictures. This is hopefully something they will remember for many many years.

Summer Lee holding Pepper.

Emma Claire holding Pepper.

Dominic holding Salt.

Mary having a heart-to-heart with Salt. :)

Devin holding Salt.

Joey getting snuggly with Salt.

Teamwork. The chicks bring everyone together! :)

We are going to miss the chicks a lot! This was so much more special than just visiting chicks at a farm. We helped to create these chicks! They started out as empty eggs and with the special care and love of 25 grade two students, they turned into chicks. :) The children got to experience every aspect of the life cycle (unfortunately they got to experience death as well). I can't wait to hatch chicks again another year! It is something that I will never forget!

Grade Two is proud to introduce you to our new babies!

Ms. MacKinnon and I arrived at school this morning to the most exciting thing ever! I can't even begin to describe how happy I was when I saw two little chicks running around in the incubator! Wow - what an amazing feeling! I wish I had of thought to video the reactions when we told the children that two of the eggs had hatched. It was priceless!

Here are the chicks soon after hatching:

They're adorable, even before they fluff up!

Sensing that the morning would be spent watching chicks, we hooked up a document camera and projected a "live feed" of the incubator onto the classroom wall. This way, we could watch what was going on in the incubator without having to crowd around it.

Here one of the already hatched chicks is trying to help another egg hatch!

It was hard to get good pictures of the chicks in the incubator, but we couldn't open it until they had dried out and fluffed up!



The white chick playing with his empty shell!



The dark chick resting on the thermometer!

Our brown egg was giving it everything he had to hatch out. We got to watch hours of exciting footage of him pecking through the egg. His progress had really slowed down at the end of the day, so we are anxious to see if he was able to peck his way out or not.

The brown egg after the pipping has begun!

Once the chicks were fluffed up and dry, we had to move them to a new home. We filled a recycling bin with newspaper and paper towel and put the heat lamp above it.

They loved their new home! :)

We had a lot of fun watching the chicks play!

Having a rest!

Face to face! :)

Playing! :)

This has been such an incredible experience! It's amazing to think that these chicks started as just little eggs and we watched their entire development! I'm very proud of my grade 2's for growing such cute little chicks!

More updates to come soon!

Cheep! Cheep! The Excitement is Building!

I wish you all could have seen the excitment level in our classroom today! Seeing those happy faces makes all the hard work worth it! At lunchtime, I went to check on the eggs and discovered the first crack! One of our little chicks had started to poke through. Upon closer observation we noticed another egg with a crack, so the hatching process has begun. Throughout the afternoon, we could hear lots of cheeping! When the chick pokes its beak through the air cell, cheeping can be heard (even before the hatching begins). You can just imagine how much excitement this brought! I was as excited as the children! We anticipate that at least one chick will be out of its egg by tomorrow. Hooray! Stay tuned!

We cannot open the incubator during hatching (we have stopped turning the eggs and have increased the humidity). This makes it very hard to get pictures (plus it's hard for everyone to see what is going on). This is the best picture I could get. If you look really closely at the egg with the "X", you can see the crack. It is near the upper left corner.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all of the wonderful Dads! I am feeling very guilty about the fact that I forgot to remind the children to bring home their Father's Day writing for their Dads! It is sitting on the front table in our classroom. :( Sorry Dads! You will get a belated gift!

We Adopted an Eagle!

Yesterday we went on our much anticipated trip to watch a baby Eaglet get banded in Covehead. We have been working towards this field trip for quite some time...in Early May, we had a special presentation from Island Nature Trust all about eagles. We then set to work to raise $100 to Adopt an Eagle. Getting to see the Eaglet was an incredible experience that we will all remember for years to come!

Here is some of the excitement from our trip:

Baby Eaglet getting his blood taken by a vet.

Getting to meet the Eaglet! :)

Everyone got to touch him!



This was totally unexpected, hence the expression. Very shocking moment to be handed an eagle!



In total awe of what is happening right now!

Our Eaglet getting his bracelet (his new band)! :)

What an incredible moment.

Ms. MacKinnon holding onto those big talons!

Returning the Eaglet to the bucket so he can make the journey back to his nest.

Up he goes!

Hard to see but there's a man in the tree returning him to his nest!

It's a long way down!

- Don't forget your sunscreen and bug spray for tomorrow and Tuesday! We will be outside for National Day of Healing and Reconciliation tomorrow from 11-2:30 and we will be going on our field trip to see the eagle banding on Tuesday morning from 9-11:30. The weather is supposed to be sunny and hot, so sunscreen is essential. It would also be a good idea to send a water bottle with your child. Ensure that your child is dressed appropriately and that they have a sweater or jacket, even if it's a hot day.

- Tomorrow our chicks will be on day 12 in the egg! Only 9 days until hatching! They are growing fast and now take up over half of the egg! We candled for the children on Friday and the chicks were moving all around. The excitement was amazing! :)

- Our spring concert is on Thursday evening. Please remember to let me know if your child will not be attending.

- I haven't received any confirmation yet from parents about attending the Young Author Celebration on June 22nd. Please remember to let me know if you are going to be able to make it. If you can't come, other friends/relatives are welcome to attend in your place. Thanks!

Have a great week!
Mrs. Roberts :)

Field Trip Change!

I'm sure the students have told you, but just in case they forgot...tomorrow's field trip has been postponed due to the weather. We will now be going on Tuesday, June 12th. Please dress accordingly on that day and don't forget bug spray and sunscreen.

Lots of News!

I have lots of news to get you up to speed on! I will be sending home a notice tomorrow as well, just in case you don't see this on the blog.

Permission slips were sent home today. One of them is for the eagle banding that we are attending this Thursday. They need to be returned by Thursday morning at the latest! The other permission slip was for our end of the year field trip to Madagascar 3D and Victoria Park. Please return it with the $10 fee for the field trip. Thank you!

A reminder that the final book order of the year will be due this Friday, June 8th. Books will be here before the last day of school.

We are missing a number of books from our classroom library. Many of these are expensive leveled readers that were sent home for reading homework. Please take a look around your house for any books that belong to our classroom and send them back as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.

We are going to have a fun end of the year Author Celebration on Friday, June 22nd from 3-4:30pm. This will be directly after our Family Math Day (1-3pm). I thought it would be a good time to have it in case parents wanted to take the afternoon off work to attend both events. Invitations will be sent home tomorrow for the Author Celebration! :)

This will be the final week for spelling and math homework. Home reading will continue each night. With this being said, many students have asked for extra math sheets or spelling work. If you would like some extra work sent home for your child (for the rest of June and/or for the summer), please let me know and I will put together a package for him/her based on his/her needs.

We have completed our work with 2-digit addition and subtraction, but many students are still struggling with regrouping. Please continue to practice at home. If your child is using the borrowing strategy in subtraction, here is a poem that can help them to remember when to borrow:

More on top,
no need to stop.
More on the floor,
go next door and get 10 more.
Numbers the same,
zero's the game.

As mentioned in the newsletter, please let me know if your child will not be attending the spring concert on June 14th. Thank you!

Exciting news today in grade two!!! Our new chicken eggs appear to be fertile! It is only day 6, but in the small white eggs (the breed is silkies), we can see dark veins and a small embryo. This is GREAT news! I did a little happy dance yesterday when I candled them! :) The students got to see the candling process today and we will candle again at the end of the week. Hopefully we will be able to see our baby chicks moving around! If all goes well, the chicks will hatch on June 20th or 21st...just in time for everyone to see them at our Author Celebration!

That's all the news for now! It is a very busy month, so expect more blog posts so that I can keep you updated on all the happenings. As the year comes to an end, I can't help but feel sad that my time with your wonderful children is almost over. :( This has been an incredible year! Thank you for sharing your little ones with me! :) I'm going to soak up every last minute that I have with them!
Mrs. Roberts

Sad news! :(

Today was a sad day in grade two. Some of the children may have told you that our chicks did not develop. We candled them yesterday and found that the "black blob" had not grown at all. It was indeed a yolk and it turns out that our eggs were never fertilized. We decided to crack them open and find out what was in there and were disappointed to see that it was only yolk. Miss MacKinnon and I started searching frantically for a new place to get eggs, because we are getting short on time. My Dad came through for us and found us 8 new eggs to incubate! This morning we put our new eggs in the incubator and we are really hoping that these ones are fertilized! Our new hatch date for our chicks is June 21st. Keep your fingers crossed for our baby chicks!

Chick Update!

Our chick eggs have now been in the incubator for 10 days! Here is what our incubator looks like:

Here's our 24 chicken eggs in the incubator. They came from 2 different hens, so they are different colours!

This week, Miss MacKinnon and I decided to "candle" the eggs. Candling is basically an ultrasound for a baby chick! You hold the egg up to a very bright light (in a dark room) and you can see what is inside the egg. Candling is much harder to do with dark shelled eggs, but we decided to try it out. Here is our candling device. It is just a flashlight with black construction paper taped onto it. The egg sits at the top (with me holding it, of course).

When we candled the eggs, we saw 2 empty eggs (nothing in them, the light shone right through the egg). These eggs are infertile. We put question marks on them and returned them to the incubator. We will check them again in another couple of days. The remaining eggs all had a black blob in them. Miss MacKinnon and I have been driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out if those black blobs are indeed chicks! We have been researching lots, but still don't have a definite answer. We will candle again on Monday. It will be day 12 and by then, so if there is a chick in there it should be easier to see. If all goes well, we hope to show the children the candling process next week.

Here is more information on candling: http://shilala.homestead.com/candling.html

Here are two pictures of what we saw in our eggs (the children have not seen these pictures, so please feel free to share with them):

We sure hope it's baby chicks in there! More updates to come soon! :)