Chick Watch '09' - Better Luck Next Time...

No chicks...Oh well.
We aren't sure what happened, but it seems like at some point, the embryos stopped developing and that was that. Definitely disappointing, but, as usual, the kids were much better at taking the news in stride than the grown ups were.
Francine and I carefully took the eggs out of the incubator first thing this morning. As you can imagine, eggs that have been sitting in a warm place like an incubator can get very rotten, very fast. We wanted to avoid the chance of the eggs exploding inside the incubator, so we felt that we couldn't wait for all of the children to arrive before we moved them. We put them in a carton, wrapped it in paper, and brought the whole package outside to the dumpster. When the kids arrived, we told them all individually that the eggs were gone. We tried to explain in simple terms what had happened. We said that the chicks did not hatch when they were supposed to, and that if chicks had not come out of their eggs by now, they were not coming out. We also said that we had to take the eggs out of the incubator before they became rotten.
During circle time, we had a more in depth conversation about what happened with the chicks inside the eggs. The kids had a chance to think about it and ask us questions. The main thing on everyone's mind was, "Why didn't the chickens hatch?" We said we did not know exactly why, but for some reason, the chicks had stopped growing inside the eggs and had died. We explained that the chicks were dead, and that when something is dead, it can't move by itself.
The whole concept of death is simple and complex at the same time. We could have gone on and on with this part of the discussion, but it was pretty clear that The Frogs were willing to accept our simple explanation of what "dead" means. Last week, we spent some time looking at dead bees and ladybugs with magnifying glasses. At the time, the children were able to explain to me that the bees and bugs would not fly away or sting them because they were "dead bugs".
The next thing the kids wanted to know was why we put the eggs in the dumpster. We explained that now, the contents of the eggs were turning into compost. When things turn into compost, they make gas- smelly gas! We explained that eventually, the smelly gas inside the eggs wouldn't have anywhere to go and the eggs would pop, just like a balloon- a very smelly balloon! We told them that, if the eggs were going to pop, we wanted them to do it in the dumpster!
We acknowledged that it was disappointing that the eggs didn't hatch when we wanted them to. We asked the kids if we should try again, and they were unanimous; YES!!! We said we'd give it a little time, then we'd get some more eggs for round two.
The overall tone of our circle time was a nice combination of serious, inquisitive, lighthearted and hopeful. On the one hand, we teachers wish things had turned out differently so we could watch the children's reaction to an incubator full of fluffy chicks. On the other hand, we all learned so much from this experience, even if it didn't go exactly as we wanted it to.