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! :)

Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis

Yesterday we participated in the Great Strides Walk for CF at our school. We are working together to raise money for this important cause. Pennies will be collected all of next week and the class with the most pennies will win a special treat! We had a wonderful walk on a sunny Friday! :)

It's Chick Hatching Time!

As you already know, we have decided to dig right in and learn about life cycles in a hands-on way! :) We will be incubating chick eggs in our classroom! The anticipation has been building and today was our big launch. Today, we placed 24 eggs in our classroom incubator and they will stay there for 21 days. Our eggs are due to start hatching on June 6th. The students are very aware of the fact that not all of the eggs will hatch and we may even get an unlucky batch that doesn't have any chicks hatch. However, we are willing to take that risk and we're going to learn so much over the next 3 weeks! I am truly amazed at how much the students have already learned about this topic. Simply ask them for some information on incubating eggs and you will be shocked at how much they know! This is going to be an incredible learning experience and we are very excited about it! I will keep you updated with pictures and posts on the blog.

Here are a couple of links to interesting websites about hatching chicks!
http://www.howtoincubate.com/index.php
http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/life20.html
http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resources/egg_to_chick/procedures.html
Happy Reading and Researching! :)

Reminders for the week of May 14-18

• There was a notice sent home on Tuesday about our end of the year field trip. Please make sure that it is sent back to school by this Friday, May 18th. We will be making a final decision on our field trip and will be sending home more details soon!
• This week's homework is 6 points of spelling and a double sided math sheet. Please let me know if you have any questions about the math!
• Tomorrow we will be starting our school fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis. Tickets will be on sale for $1 and students can win a variety of items. A notice with information on this was sent home today.

Pictures!

Thanks to everyone who came out to our Art Extravaganza! It was a wonderful time! :)

I didn't take any pictures at the Art Night, but have some pictures that I never posted from our field trip to the Esso Cup hockey game. I also have some pictures of the students making their cars in Science class. Enjoy!

Totally engrossed in the hockey game!!

Ms. Burry got to take some shots during intermission!

We had a great time at the hockey game!