A Closer Look at Chickens

 

We recently were offered the opportunity, through our home educators group, to incubate and hatch chicks!  We, of course, jumped at the opportunity!  Then…panic set in…what did we know about chickens??  So, in the weeks leading up to the eggs’ arrival…we did our homework.

We were able to find these gorgeous Chicken Life Cycle printables over at Welcome to Mommyhood.  

Chicks and Chickens by Gail Gibbons

We all know the age old dispute of what came first…the chicken or the egg?  Well, the way we figure…an egg hatching a motherless chick just makes no sense…the mama had to come first, right?  So that’s what we started with.  The girls drew hens and labelled her anatomy.  

We then moved on to talking about why farmers would keep hens.  We decided to focus on laying hens as that is a more pleasant route.  We used our much loved book, Food Anatomy by Julia Rothman to whip up a few variations of eggs…fried, scrambled, poached and boiled.  Miss 7 loves boiled best and Miss 5 likes scrambled…they both agreed that poached eggs were the coolest to make.

We then discussed the role of a rooster in the chicken coop.  We again studied the animals’ anatomy and also different comb styles. The girls were completely intrigued at how some eggs were fertilized and others were not!  I definitely recommend the below book for a gentle introduction to “The Birds and The Bees”.  The diagrams and scientific explanations were a hit!

Egg to Chick by Millicent Selsam

 

Next up, the developing embryo!  This proved to be valuable research as we were able to eventually “candle” the eggs we were incubating and SEE the embryo move! (See the full experience HERE)

We loved the beautiful timeline of embryo development in the book listed below.

An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston

 

Next up, we studied how chicks hatch…first a “pip” or first break, then a “zipper” around the whole egg and one final push!

The girls adored this “My First Discoveries” book…it has clear pages that reveal different layers as you move through the book.  

The Egg by Rene Mettler

We then took a few moments to study other “oviparous” animals and were quite surprised at how many we hadn’t really considered to be egg layers!

To finish our day, I prepped a chicken themed play dough kit to play with while we read our final book, which was all about kids hatching chicks.  This book was referenced A LOT during our time with our eggs and chicks!

 

A Kid’s Guide to Keeping Chickens by Melissa Caughey 

Don’t forget to have a peek at our full adventure incubating and hatching eggs HERE!

 

Have you tried this experience before?  Do you own chickens?

Let me know!

Sue

“We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program,

an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to

earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.”