Egg-citing times!!

I arrived in school as early as I could ( 7.25 to be precise!) to find that Dave had 3 other siblings and another on its way. Chick 5's beak was visible and in the time I went out to greet the children, he had appeared!! Wow!! Alł day we have waited and watched for chick number 6 to appear and despite a small crack, not much more has happened. Advice is not to open the incubator until all possible hatchlings have appeared but as it looked a little cramped we sought some egg- spert advice from the one and only Mr Hough ( who's field spans working for the RSPB  and filming/ working with a range of birds across the globe) who said it was ok and probably a good idea to transport our little chicks to their new home. Oh my goodness, what lovely little chicks we have!!! If only we didn't have a staff meeting to attend, Miss G and I could have sat and cuddled them for hours!!! 

So, lesson 1, the art of eating and drinking was taught- a dip of a little beak in water and then in chick crumbs and hey presto, independent feeders!!!! 

Night night little ones......

Hatching day!

20 days ago, we set our 7 eggs in the incubator. The children have talked about the eggs daily, in terms of "the eggs are on the move" as the incubator mimics Mummy hen and moves them every so often. 

We have looked at the growing chicks using a special candle lamp and saw blood vessels and clear signs of growing chicks.

Still, nothing can every prepare you for the final, magical hatching and today we were lucky enough to witness it with our own eyes. Truly wonderful and quite rare as they tend to like hatching at night ( maybe because it's dark and quiet?!) and we are a day early.

So here we welcome chick number 1 ( who may already have been named- Miss Grant insists it's 'Dave' and since it was her birthday yesterday we might let her have that one!!)who struggled a bit and caused some concern towards the end of the whole process since he seemed to arrive backwards with a large part of shell attached to his head! 

And so here are some photos which show what we found this morning and finish with our lovely 'Dave' born around 3.40pm today!

Ahhhh! Lovely. 

Who know what we may find in the morning???!

We're going on a Gruffalo Childs hunt!

This week, in the run up to our exciting theatre trip to see 'A Gruffalos child', we have been thinking lots about the Gruffalo and The Gruffalos child. 

On Tuesday we went on a very important hunt to find the Gruffalos child. The hunt took us across the bark area, "crunch, crunch", through the willow tunnel"whoo, whoo", over the hill "stomp, stomp", past the pond " splash, splash", through the trees "swishy, swishy", through the tunnel" whoosh, whoosh"! After a lovely time outside exploring our surroundings, we found him! He was hiding in the bushes in the Nest ( our lovely outdoor classroom). And there, waiting for us, was a story of The Gruffalos child, all ready for us to share and enjoy.

We're not going on a Gruffalo hunt again!!!!!

World book day

Last week we enjoyed celebrating World Book Day.

We all came to school dressed as a favourite character from a book. Here are some of our costumes.

Even the teachers and teaching assistants dressed up!

We enjoyed sharing the stories our characters had come from - many bring from our favourite stories.

The Tiger Who came to tea...

Mr Gum....

Winnie the witch...

What the ladybird heard ( with Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len!)....

We're going on a bear hunt..... And more besides.

We had lots of fun.

We then thought about stories in Read Write zinc and we made our own stories up by playing a game based on characters and settings.

We had lots of lovely story tellers.