Have you heard the news?!

When I arrived at school today, a chick had already hatched! Since we have never had any "early birds" in my classroom, this came as quite a shock to me! As I'm sure you've heard from your first grader, 3 more hatched after that first one, for a total of four hatched by the time I left school late this afternoon. It made for a very exciting day!

I'm taking many photos, which I will show at the Chick Hatch Celebration on Friday (and I will post that slideshow on the blog after the celebration for those who cannot attend). Students were able to see live video of chicks hatching today, as I can mirror what's on my iPad to our Apple TV, which projects onto the interactive whiteboard. That's technology at work! It beats crowding around a small incubator with lots of pushing and shoving to see the action any day!

The video below was taken after students had watched two hatch already, and we were observing this more as scientists. They were extremely excited, but not quite as loud and boisterous as after the previous hatches! :-) We spent eight minutes watching the "live feed" from the iPad video recording app pointing into the incubator, until finally the magic happened. Here's a snippet of the hatch video that we recorded as we watched the action happening in "real time." (I'll post some photos tomorrow of the set-up, just in case this doesn't make sense to you...or just ask your first grader!)

Students took turns being on "egg/chick watch" duty today! It was a coveted position. :-)