Birthday Surprises

My class has been taking care of chicken eggs for the last 20 days. Tomorrow was supposed to be the magical 21st day when all the chicks would hatch. My mouth nearly hit the floor when I walked into my classroom this morning (the 20th day) to find 3 baby chicks walking around in the incubator.

Needless to say, I threw my lesson plans for Monday out the window and decided to go to plan B. The early arrival of the babies sent me into a frenzy. I called on my super husband for backup. I asked him to pick up a heat lamp and feed for the chickens from a local farm store. He came swiftly to my rescue with everything the chickens needed and a huge bouquet of happy birthday balloons for me. Turns out that the chickens and I now share the same B-day!

We had a chicken fun filled day from that point on consisting of the chicken dance, chicken tic-tac-toe and happy birthday to the chickens. I have never seen such excitement from kids as long as I have been teaching. Here are a few pictures we snapped today.



We were able to broadcast the chicks in the incubator to the entire school live. We set up the camcorder in my room and pointed it into the their warm hatching ground.
By the end of the day I took 7 fuzzy chicks out and moved them to an aquarium.


All day we had plenty of visitors wanting to get their own peek at our new fuzzy friends. Two of my teammates, Michele and Cindy, even got in on the chicken-mania with a sporty chicken hat! I expect to find more babies tomorrow when I get to school.






Tonight we had family over and did some more B-day celebrations. Eric cooked out burgers and we had a yummy white lady bug cake. I have to say, I have had some really good birthdays but his one really ranks way up there!