IRMO, S.C. — Each year, kindergarten classes at Leaphart Elementary School learn the process of hatching chicks by doing it themselves.
Mrs. O’Neil is one of the teachers who has been keeping chicken eggs in an incubator in her classroom. This morning was the end of their 21 day process of incubation and some of them began to hatch.
“So, when we got them in the kids were very excited about them," O'Neil tells us, "They were curious about them. We didn’t really say much about them, we just wanted to see if they could inquire about them and they began to ask questions and that’s really where we started.”
A poster in the back of the class illustrated the 21 steps the eggs take to hatch overlooking the incubator. The students gathered around to see the one egg who had hatched and talk about how he did it.
"Well it used its tooth," Kamarri Littlejohn, a kindergartner in Mrs. Mackay's class told me about how the chick got through its shell, "a sharp tooth to try and break it out."
Littlejohn said he had no idea how a chick was born and everyone was "surprised" to see it hatch. "We tried to give it something that it wants," Littlejohn explains, "We gave it a lamp so it can be warm and go to sleep and when it wakes up again it just keeps chirping.”
“This is one of the most exciting days in kindergarten," O'Neil told us, "Its really cool how it pulls the community of our school together and we see classes from all grade levels come in to observe and so, to be able to see the excitement on my kids faces, that’s just what draws me to want to ask more questions and get them to research more and really just take in all of this knowledge of what scientists do.”
After about two weeks of learning about these chicks and observing them, some teachers here at Leaphart Elementary school have volunteered to take them home to join their families.
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