A few more egg unit projects

Hi every one! I still wanted to show you just a few more egg unit things we did. These ones are more Language Arts related. 


Most of the kids had reading comprehension IEP goals, so I was always trying to find new ways of practicing reading comprehension during Language Arts. By the end, I was starting to repeat some of the activities! I did come up with a new one... a giant crossword puzzle! I first did it after reading The Egg, by MP Robertson, because I found a printable crossword puzzle online, so I just reproduced it on a poster board. 

The kids liked it so much and asked to do it again, so I made my own crossword puzzle for A Chick Called Saturday, by Joyce Dunbar. For the second one, I used an online crossword puzzle creator, and then again reproduced it onto poster board. The kids worked on this as a group. Every student had a turn to hear a clue and write in the answer, but he could ask the others for help. Check this out!

I even added some of my own artwork at the bottom:

Another thing we did was read Chickens Aren't The Only Ones, by Ruth Heller, and then brainstormed a list of oviparous and nonoviparous animals. The kids usually like brainstorming activities, and it is good exercise for their brains. Each student had to come up with one oviparous and one nonoviparous animals, and at the end it was kind of a free for all where they could just toss in any ideas they thought of. Here is our brainstorming board:

And now, for the best part!
We were doing this whole egg unit because of the eggs we were trying to hatch in our incubator. Well,  during my final week at Tree Elementary, our eggs hatched! I actually got to see one hatch before my eyes. It really was like a miracle! I was even more excited than the kids!

Five chicks were born healthy. One was born sort of unhealthy. He was just laying on the ground and not moving. After some research I figured out that he was born with splayed legs, which could be easily fixed with a bandaid around his legs. I wasn't sure how to do it so we thought we should let the people at the farm take care of his legs. (Our chicks go to a no-kill farm near by, where they make more eggs for more schools to hatch.) The splayed leg chick wouldn't eat or drink, because he couldn't really move around. I ended up caring for him by mashing up bird seed in water, smearing it onto my hand, and then holding the chick in my other hand. If I held my seedy hand in front of him, he would peck it and eat the food. I gave him water by just sort of spooning it into his mouth. I got kind of attached to that little guy! I really hope they were able to fix him up once he got to the farm!

I totally want a pet chick now.