chickens – Montessori Muddle

CHICKEN MIDDLE’S FIRST EGG!!!

Last year, our middle schoolers named their business Chicken Middle. I was a bit skeptical, but the name stuck. This year, thanks to a lot of help from the school community (thanks to the R’s for the Ruby Coops), we finally have chickens (thanks to Mrs. C. for fostering chicks for us over the summer).

And today, we had our first egg. The students were a little excited.

It looks a little lonely sitting there by itself in the egg carton (thanks to Mrs. D., Mrs. P., and everyone else who donated egg cartons), but with a little luck it will have lots of company soon.

A student hand-feeds crickets to the chickens.

The Chicken Coops are Here

Finding the right place for the chicken coops.

Now that we’re at the end of the academic year, our middle school business’ chicken coops have finally arrived (they were on back order). The kids had some fun finding the right spot for the coops, and we staked out an area for fencing; we plan to clip the birds’ wings.

Although, the coops came pre-assembled, the students needed to make some final adjustments.

Tomorrow, during math, they’ll be finding the perimeter so we can order fencing, and finding the area so we can know how much space we’ll have per bird.

The Eggs have Arrived

After waiting an eternity (about two weeks) the Middle School business’ eggs have arrived.

We set up the incubator downstairs in the pre-school/Kindergarden classroom so Mrs. D’s kids will have the chance of monitoring them. The little kids will be responsible for turning the eggs, while the middle schoolers have set up a data logger and a couple temperature probes to keep track of the temperature in the incubator.

The incubator was provided by Ms. Mertz. It’s put together out of plywood with a 75 W incandescent light bulb as the heat source. Unfortunately there is a significant thermal gradient and although we salvaged a couple of computer fans for the purpose we did not get around to installing them –and more importantly testing them– in the incubator before the eggs arrived.

We’ll see how it goes.

Science of Cooking at the Exploratorium.

The San Francisco Exploratorium has a wonderful website on the science of cooking.

They have a very nice bread science page that explains what happens with the yeast and gluten as you mix, kneed and bake bread. There is a set of recipes, including sourdough and Ethiopian Injera, that my students might want to try. They even have a great links page to pretty much everything you might want to know about the science of bread and how to manipulate it.

pointing2_sml — Checking eggs for cracks. (© The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu)

I was also very interested in their pages on eggs, with the virtual tour of an organic egg farm, science of cooking, beating and mixing eggs, and a wonderful set of activities including removing the eggshell while keeping the membrane intact and demonstrating osmosis through the egg membrane.

And I haven’t even gotten into the pickles, meat and seasoning sections yet.