Researching and eggs

Spring is a time of growth and, in school, the beginning of the end of the year count down. Students eagerly peer outside to gauge weather conditions and see if they can persuade me to let them outside early. Keeping them interested and engaged can be a challenging task. 

One of the things I like to do to keep kids motivated and learning is to hatch eggs in the Library Learning Commons every few years. This time we will have 2 incubators to hatch out barnyard fowl and waterfowl. Next week students in K-8 will research the bird of their choice and organize the information we will need to hatch and take care of these birds. They all have good homes to go to so students will not be vying for them. 

The first incubator will hold guinea fowl, banty chickens, and barnyard mix chickens. I have tried to time the collection and incubation of the eggs so all birds will hatch around the same time. As we all know, you cannot dictate what Mother Nature does so we will watch, document, and see if my calculations are correct. The guinea eggs were placed this week since they were available and guineas are tricky egg layers. 

 The photo below shows the three types of eggs we currently have incubating. The first is a Pilgrim goose egg, the second a Ancona duck egg, and lastly a guinea egg. The kids loved examining the goose egg and comparing it to the tiny guinea egg. Next week we will add the bantam and regular chicken eggs.

This is the second incubator that currently holds 2 goose eggs and 12 duck eggs. We have been informed that both have had a high hatching rate. We will keep our fingers crossed and hope that happens in this case. 

Next week in class, we will arm ourselves with videos, books, computers, and perhaps skype interviews to learn more about this process. 

Keep following for updates,
The Noisy Librarian