Mrs. Deaton's Kinders: 2015

We have been working really hard during school to create a class book all about life in Kindergarten. We wanted to write a story for preschool kids so they will know why Kindergarten is so awesome!

We worked as a class to create a book using the iPad app called StoryKit. Each student in our class wrote and illustrated about a specific thing that we learn or do in Kindergarten. Then, we each got to use Mrs. Deaton's iPad to take a picture of what we wrote about. We put the picture into the app called StoryKit. Then, we recorded our voice reading what we wrote.

Click on the link and check out our story below. We hope you enjoy!

http://iphone.childrenslibrary.org/cgi-bin/view.py?b=yoamd7gngqbgyv5wzjv6

We love Kindergarten!!

We have something extremely exciting going on in our classroom this week! We have been hatching baby chicks. Before the chicks hatched, we learned all about the life cycle of a chicken. It takes a hen and a rooster to make a baby chick. The hen is the one that lays the eggs. After she lays the eggs, she sits on them. The hen has to sit on them to keep them warm. The hen also rotates the eggs and rolls them around in the nest. We don't have a hen in our kindergarten classroom. We have an incubator to keep our eggs warm and to rotate them.

It takes 21 days for a baby chick to grow inside the egg. While the chick is in the egg, the chick eats the yolk. There are little holes in the egg that you can't see. There are tiny blood vessels that carry the air from outside the egg to the baby chick (the chick is called an embryo). We got to use a special light (overhead projector) to look inside our eggs in our classroom. We predicted whether or not our chicks would hatch after looking inside the eggs. Some of the eggs seemed empty but other eggs looked like there was a chick inside. We even saw some blood vessels!

After 21 days, it is time for the baby chick to start hatching! The chick has a special thing on the end of it's beak called an egg tooth. The chick uses this egg tooth to crack a tiny hole in the egg. Then, the chick keeps cracking the egg in a zig zag line across the middle. He has to use his feet and body to push his way out of the egg. As soon as the chick gets out of the egg, he is exhausted! This means that he is super tired. The chick will rest for a long time. The chick actually looks like he just got out of the bathtub when he hatches because he is very wet. We call his feathers "down". The chick's down is very very wet but it will dry after a few hours. When the chick dries, he is very fluffy and soft. The baby chicks are also very loud and chatty throughout the day!

Our baby chicks are so adorable. Even though we wish that more would have hatched, we have five adorable chicks. We have been playing with the chicks all week in our classroom. Mrs. Deaton has to take the chicks back to the farm this afternoon so we are going to miss them so much! This has been such a fun experience for us and we will never forget it!

"When we looked inside the eggs with a light before the chicks were born, we decided if we thought the egg was a dud or if it was going to hatch. We put a star or a D on the egg." Cever