How exciting!...we’ve been hatching baby chicks.  We have been very excited over the last few weeks at nursery! On Monday morning (6th March) we talked about some very special visitors who were coming to the nursery.  She bought with her 8 eggs, which were going to hatch into chicks  in the next few days…how exciting!  She gave us lots of instructions about how to look after the eggs whilst they were getting ready to hatch and how to look after the chicks once they had come out of their egg shells.

The children have been watching very carefully over the last day to see changes to the eggs.  This has been a wonderful experience for the children to see something very special. It has brought about some wonderful discussions and problem solving as well as giving us the opportunity to introduce lots of new language like hatch and incubator . The children have also been looking at lots of pictures of the different stages of the chickens life so they know what to expect when they come out of the eggs and looking also at some non fiction books to find out more about what will happen.

Over the next few days when all the chicks have hatched (and they are dry, yellow and fluffy) we fed them chick crumb and gave them some water in a special water bowl. We also looked more closely at them out of the incubator and also stroke them. We have already been practicing using our kind and gentle hands, in preparation for this special moment and we know that we need to wash our hands after we have been handling them.

This kind of experience is very important for our children. Not only is it fantastically exciting and awe inspiring, but it also helps them to learn about the importance of living things and how to be kind and take care of them. It also helps the children to be aware of their own health and safety when we reinforce kind touching and hand washing. 

Chicks 2023