Life Cycle of a chick!

The past two weeks as you all know the nursery have been very fortunate to look after some chicks and watch them hatch, play with them, hold/touch them and observe them when out of their cage. Today in preschool we said goodbye to our chicks and got to say hello to some ducks in the process! We all sat in a circle and the man who took the chicks, brought back a yellow duck and a brown duck the same age our chicks to look at, this was very exciting for everyone! Once we said goodbye to the ducks too, we did a focus activity on the life cycle of a chic.

We set up the focus activity in a tuff tray, filling it with crushed cereal hoops, rice krispies for pretend food and a water tray, hay, a hen, a pop open egg with a pretend chic inside, three real eggs and lots of pictures and facts about chics.

We started this activity by asking the children’s thoughts on what the activity might be about, and proceeded with asking what the children think the hen needs to do with her eggs and why. Once the hen was placed on top of the eggs to keep them warm so they could hatch, we moved on to the pictures and fact cards. We showed pictures of a hen, a hen nesting, eggs, eggs hatching and chicks. The children were asked what they think the order of the photos should be to show the life cycle of a chick. We then read some very interesting facts about chicks and chickens, and then the egg was ready to hatch! We popped open the pretend egg and out came the pretend chic, we asked the children what they think the chic needs, waddling the chic over to the pretend food, water and back to the hen for warmth. We then turned the tray into a farm once we were finished with it so the children could make their own farm using wooden blocks for fences.