Today, we wondered if we could see inside our eggs like we could when we candled them the first time. We wanted to know if the eggs would look like they did the first time we candled them, and boy did we learn a whole lot!!! We saw a lot more than we saw the first time. We could actually see the ducks move!
After we candled, we recorded our thoughts in our An Egg is Quiet journals..
"Today we were candling and it was a lot more cool to me. In our egg it had a baby and in the other one it did not, it looked like this."
"Today, we candled our eggs again so we could know if baby ducks were growing inside them."
"Today we candled our eggs again so we could know if baby ducks were growing inside them. When I looked inside a runner duck egg it had veins and we could see the duck moving! It was SO cool!"
"In the Runner eggs there was a duck in the Pekin egg there was nothing."
"Me and Claire and Cameron and Jason and Mason candled eggs again so we can see if a baby is growing a Pekin or a Runner."
Yesterday, while I had the amazing opportunity to be at a conference on co-teaching in Columbia, my friends shared the differences they noticed between Pekin and Runner ducks from their research they had done for homework. After sharing and charting the differences, we recorded what we saw in our An Egg is Quiet journals.
Pekin
Ducks
Runner
Ducks
Come from China and are bred from Mallard ducks
They lay a lot of eggs! (1500-3000)
Grown ducks can be about 8 to 12 lbs
They do
not fly or waddle.
Can live for 9 years
They
stand straight up like penguins
They have white feathers.
They
run AND walk.
They don't run like runner ducks do
They
come in lots of colors!
They
have an orange bill
Usually
weigh 4-4.5 lbs (smaller than Pekins)
Look at that amazing work! I am so proud of my friends. Way to go friends for working hard even when I wasn't there!
Today, we had the absolutely amazing opportunity to skype with a 4k class from Dover Elementary School in Orangeburg. The 4k class we spoke with has ducks that are 3 weeks old! They have already been through the entire process of hatching ducks and are now taking care of them. We knew we had a lot to learn from them, so we wrote down specific questions we had for them.
Here are a few of our questions...
"Do baby runner ducks run all around the classroom? Do Pekin ducks sit by your chair when you work?"
"How do they hatch when they are born?"
"Do ducks run when they hatch? Do baby ducks sleep when they hatch?"
"Are baby ducks yellow or white when they hatch?"
"Do they follow you around?"
"Do they run and are they with you when they first hatch?"
"Can we see your ducks?"
Then, we got to go to Ms. Garner's classroom (Thanks for hosting us, Ms. Garner!) and call our new friends on Skype!
Here is Isabelle asking her question about if ducks eyes are open or closed when they hatch.
Here is a video from our conversation with our new friends. This is when they were sharing facts about ducks that they had researched and learned with us.
We learned a LOT of really neat information. Our 4k friends taught us that ducks are fragile and that we need to be very gentle when we pet our new feathered friends. They showed us how to use two fingers to pet our ducks. We also learned that ducks LOVE to swim, that bread is not good for duckling bellies, and that ducks have 3 eyelids!
After our skype session, we recorded our learning in our An Egg is Quiet journals...
"Today, we learned they have 3 eyelids!"
"Today, we learned not to give ducks bread to them and they have 3 eye lids! Do you know how to pet them? You take 2 fingers, ok?"
"I learned that you have to use two fingers to pet the duck."
"Today I learned that do not give your ducks bread because bread messes with ducks stomachs so give your ducks worms to eat. And I also learned that ducks are fragile."
"Today, we used skype to learn from 4k friends at Dover Elementary in Orangeburg. We learned that ducks are wet when they hatch and they need to stay in the closed up part. When they hatch they have 3 eye lids!"
"I learned about ducks names and they have 3 eyelids!"
"Today we went to Ms. Garner's classroom and skyped on her Promethean board and computer and we learned do not give ducks bread, it is bad for them."
I am SO glad my friends got to have this awesome experience by learning from their peers. Thank you Ms. Garner, Dr. Patterson, and friends at Dover Elementary for our chance to learn with you today!
Today, we wrote all about how not all eggs are the same size. I think my friends' writing speaks for itself on how much we have learned about different sized eggs!
"The ostrich egg is so big it can weigh 8 pounds! The ostrich egg is the biggest egg I have seen. The hummingbird egg is as small as a jelly bean."
"An ostrich egg is so big that it can weigh 8 pounds. To hold an ostrich egg you have to use both of your hands. Hummingbird eggs are as small as a jelly bean."
"An ostrich egg needs 2 hands. Hummingbird eggs need like 100 to be like an ostrich egg but it's more than that it's 2,000."
"An ostrich egg is so big that it can weigh 8 pounds. You need two hands. Hummingbird eggs are as small as a jelly bean. You only need a finger to hold it."
Today was such an exciting day in Fort Kindergarten!! Today was the first time we have candled our eggs to see inside of them. We were thrilled to see that we had quite a lot of fertile duck eggs!!
We observed the veins and the embryos in the eggs with ducklings. We could very clearly see embryos and veins in our runner ducks, but our pekin ducks were not nearly as clear. We are wondering if this means that our pekins are developing a little more slowly than our runners. We will find out for sure when we candle again next week!
We then wrote about our candling experience in our An Egg is Quiet journals.. I loved some of the observations my friends recorded! (We candled our eggs in the bathroom because it has no windows and made it easy for us to see what was inside the egg.)
"Today we are candling our eggs to see if they have ducks."
"In the bathroom there was babies in there it was so cool and awesome!"
"I noticed that in a Pekin duck egg that there was not a duck. Today we are candling eggs to see if there are baby ducks inside."
"Today we are candling our eggs to see if there are baby ducks growing inside them. We saw veins in the eggs with babies!"
"I saw a runner duck in the egg. We went in the bathroom."
Tomorrow we will be writing about eggs that come in different sizes. Stay tuned for more awesome learning and writing here in room 202!
Today, we put the research we did at home to use and learned all about animals who lay eggs instead of having babies that are alive. We read Chickens Aren't the Only Ones, by Ruth Heller. We learned while reading the book that reptiles, insects, fish, birds and amphibians can all be oviparous animals. We learned that oviparous animals are animals that lay eggs instead of having babies.
We put our learning about oviparous animals into action by "hatching"our own oviparous animals. We used plastic eggs and hatched pictures of oviparous animals out of them. While we were "hatching" our oviparous eggs, we showed the class what animal we had and then we had a class discussion on the animal. While having the discussion, we began to sort the oviparous animals into smaller categories. The categories we came up with were: reptiles, insects, fish, birds and amphibians.
Here are some pictures of us hatching our oviparous animals and sorting them:
Lauren hatched a snake!
Noah hatched an ant!
Lindsey hatched a ladybug!
Linzey hatched a cardinal!
Tanvi hatched a shark!
Claire hatched a tree frog!
At this point, this was what our sorting of the oviparous animals we had hatched so far looked like..
Shyla hatched a frog!
Emily hatched a turtle!
Isabelle hatched a clownfish!
Shube hatched an eagle!
Sophia hatched a chicken!
And here was the final result of our sorting..
Our pictures that we "hatched" were glued onto the poster board and will now be displayed as an anchor chart for us to refer to for the rest of the year!
And then, we had to really put our learning in action by creating a page about oviparous animals in our An Egg is Quiet books..
"Did you know that ducks aren't the only ones that lay eggs? Robins lay eggs, and ostriches also, clown fish and sea turtles, last are the hummingbirds and these are my oviparous animals."
"Did you know that ducks aren't the only animals that lay eggs? Because ostriches can lay eggs too and many other animals."
"Did you know that ducks aren't the only ones who lay eggs?"
"Did you know that ducks aren't the only ones who lay eggs? Instead of having a live baby, they lay eggs and are called oviparous animals."
"Did you know that birds aren't the only animals that lay eggs?"
We learned SO much today and we LOVED "hatching" our oviparous animals. Stay tuned as we continue to learn all about these animals all week long!
