tuesday - day zero

On Tuesday morning we welcomed a collection of eggs into our classroom. Each egg is numbered from 1 - 27 and has a place in our incubator. The experience of hatching eggs in our classroom comes with a lot of responsibility; having careful and calm bodies, remembering only three children at a time can be near the incubator, and ensuring the incubator temperature stays at 99.9 degrees and the humidity stays within 45 - 55%.





The Kindergarteners have embraced this responsibility. During academic choice some children helped to make signs for our chick documentation; our hatching calendar, questions for the community (which egg is the biggest?) and noting how many eggs we have. This work encouraged the making of predictions (many of the children think egg number 10 is the biggest) and conversations - how will we measure the eggs? 

I find making meaningful and authentic connections across content areas and experiences to be essential. We have continued exploring story problems involving chicks in our math journals and have shown 27 eggs in a variety of ways; using numbers, words, pictures, and ten frames.

The questions around the size of our eggs connects to our work with measurement during number corner. Avery suggests we measure the weight of the eggs, comparing weight using our scale - the heaviest egg is the biggest. Inez thinks we should use a tape measure and wrap it around the middle of the eggs - the biggest egg around is the biggest egg. Oliver thinks a ruler should be our tool of choice, measuring the length of each egg - the longest egg is definitely the biggest.

Next week, we will use the children's suggestions and measure the eggs we have previously predicted to be the biggest. I will leave this open ended for the children to decide, based on our findings, which egg is the biggest. I'm looking forward to discoveries that will challenge their thoughts and predictions - I hope the longest egg is also the lightest or the heaviest egg is the shortest!

How will they decide which measurable attribute determines the biggest egg? Or will we combine all of the collected data? My initial thoughts are to encourage the children to represent their findings using a graph. Look for updates on our chick eggs - and all of the math and literacy work that is part of this experience - next week!