Chickens in the Classroom

Last year, we participated in Chickens in the Classroom, through our local 4-H office.  We went to the office and picked up a dozen eggs that had already been candled (back-lit to make sure there was a growing baby chicken inside).

We had to set up the homemade incubator, fill the pan under the shelf with water....

make sure the "thermostat" was adjusted to keep the eggs warm.

Wyatt took care of them.  He sprayed them with water to keep them moist, and turned them over multiple times, everyday.  We put X marks on the eggs, so he could tell when he turned them over.  You can see when the little chicks started making peck marks as they began to make their way out of the eggs.

Hatching chicks was pretty fun, especially seeing the little chicks make their way out of the shell... then going from wet, weak, scrawny birds to cute, fluffy, little chicks.

The part and both liked and didn't like about this project is that the birds are all Cornish Cross Chickens, which means they are meat birds. They grow very big, very fast.  If you don't butcher them in a timely manner, their legs can break.  They get scary big!  And I don't enjoy the butchering and packaging.  They are good eating.  I very much enjoy eating chickens that I know how they've been raised.  Ellie refuses to eat them, because she fell in love with them when they looked like this:

Academy of the Gospel 2011 Science Fair Project

This year's Science Project was called The Tooth Truth.  The local librarian has put on a Science Fair for homeschooled kids both this year and last year.  This is the kids' display board. 

Ellie and Wyatt studied how different tooth cleansers work at cleaning your teeth and why.  Our dentist is always saying how children need fluoride and how important fluoride is.   I haven't used fluoride toothpaste since Wyatt was a baby and I haven't had a cavity since then either, so I don't put much stock in statements on the necessity of fluoride.

The kids studied how well different toothpastes, and baking soda, cleaned teeth by using the blue tooth dye that you can get in the toothpaste isle to identify plaque when brushing your teeth.  Ellie was afraid the tooth dye would permanently dye her teeth, so she asked her friend Sam to be her stunt double.  Sam was happy to oblige. 

First the kids got their teeth really sugary with ice cream and any other sweet thing they could think of.

Then they used the rinse to dye the stuff on their teeth blue, so we could see the build up of sugar.



Next they brushed their teeth with different tooth cleansers for two minutes each.  After two minutes, the teeth were checked to see how much blue dye was left.  All the the natural toothpastes (no fluoride included) and baking soda showed no blue dye on the teeth.  The commercial fluoride toothpastes still showed blue dye on the teeth, and the teeth did not feel as clean as with the other tooth cleansers.  I was one of their subjects and can attest to the results.

They also learned about fluoride and fluorine.  Fluoride, a synthetic form of fluorine is actually prohibited in many countries as a lethal toxin.  Fluorine is a naturally occurring substance found in greens, spinach, almonds, carrots, dandelions, and black tea.  Fluorine does have positive effects on the teeth.

The kids then had to do an oral presentation at the library.  There was supposed to be a Science teacher there to give them a score on their projects.  I don't know what happened, but she was not there that night for presentations.  The librarian said the scores were really close, but the kids did not get a ribbon this year.
Had we known the criteria on the sheet they were going to be graded on ahead of time, the kids would have done a few things differently. 

Ellie and Wyatt did a great job presenting their work.  The project was totally original.  I loved that they decided to dress up for their presentation.  I am so proud them!

I know I am a little late in posting this, but I'm trying to catch up.  There are some homeschooling things that I really want to chronicle on the blog, and this is one of them.

Tagged!

So, I got "tagged" on my friend Sara's Blog. She was the first one to encourage me to write a blog. So, this is for you, Sara!

These are the instructions:

1. Open the 4th picture folder on your computer
2. Open the 4th picture and post it on your blog
3. Explain the picture
4. Tag 4 people to do the same!


Forgive me, I'm not going to tag anyone else. Also, forgive me, I used the technical fourth picture from the fourth folder, not the actual. The actual picture was cool, from our trip to Virginia/Washington D.C., but it was accidentally downloaded into that folder. I ran out of room on my memory card during our trip and switched over to the camera's memory. I thought I had deleted all those pictures, but they popped up when I downloaded these.



So, this is our chrysalis! The kids found a caterpillar last summer. The whole summer reading program last year was about bugs. We had just learned about how you could "grow" your own butterfly, so we did! The pictures of the actual butterfly are stuck on my cell phone (I will get them off...someday!).

Our caterpillar lived in Ellie's turtle tank (which has yet to be used for a turtle, but that was the purpose behind the tank). We filled the tank with branches and grass and leaves. It was a very short time (a day or two) before the caterpillar had formed a chrysalis. While we waited, he lived on our coffee table in the living room.

One day Wyatt came hollering; he was SO excited! The caterpillar had turned into a butterfly! We took the tank outside. The butterfly (I think it's name was Jamie, because it could be a girl or boy's name) dried it's wings and left us that afternoon. We later found out he was a rare butterfly to our area, which made our butterfly all the more exciting.

I had left my camera in my Hubby's car (which was at his work right then), so I had to take pics of the butterfly with my camera...(no other camera to use at that time). I've tried time and again to send the pictures to the Kodak picture maker, but with no luck. One of these days I got to turn on the e-mail option on my phone and e-mail myself all the pictures in there.

This is one of my favorite homeschool science projects. If we find another butterfly caterpillar, I'm sure we will do this again.