Jeannette Larrabee’s classroom is home to six incubating eggs that will hatch into baby chicks in the next couple weeks. The classroom project is made possible through the North Central Iowa Ag in the Classroom program, which provides the eggs, incubator, learning materials and pen for the baby chicks once they hatch.

“The focus is increasing kids’ awareness of agriculture,” explained CCS Principal Stephanie Coble-Day. “I think some of us take for granted that kids should know about it. I was a farm kid, but a lot of kids live in town and have never been on a farm.”

For now, the eggs spend most of their time in an incubator, keeping warm as the embryos grow.

Each day, students in the class learn about how the eggs are developing inside through a practice called “candling,” where Larrabee holds the egg over a bright light so the student can see the shadow of the chicken embryo inside.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
CCS third grader Jersey Grell shows the "Baby Chick Watch" live stream on her computer.

Much to the students’ dismay, the eggs are due to hatch over the school’s spring break. However, Larrabee has set up a “Baby Chick Watch” live stream video through Google Classroom, so students can log in and see the chicks as they break through their shells for the first time.

“We’re trying to let them experience it even though it’s happening over spring break,” Larrabee said.

This has been an exciting project for the students, the teacher said.

The students will be able to raise the baby chicks for a short time after they hatch, but then the chicks will be returned to Ag in the Classroom.

To go along with the project, each student has a baby chick workbook to keep track of the eggs’ progress and to journal in.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert CCS third grader Raelynne Brady shows how big she thinks the baby chicks are going to be when they hatch in a few weeks.

“There’s some hard questions and easy questions,” explained third-grader Raelynne Brady.

Brady said she has chickens at home on her family’s farm, but she still enjoys checking on the eggs in Larrabee’s classroom each day.

“Some of them you can see them and some of them are still just a little dot,” she said after observing the candling of the eggs.

Brady has some predictions about when they’ll see little beaks poking out of the shells.

“I think some are going before spring break, most of them aren’t going to hatch until a couple days after spring break and a couple will do it in the middle,” she said.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
CCS third grader Raelynne Brady and teacher Jeannette Larrabee observe the development of the chicken embryo inside the egg using a method called "candling."

Coble-Day said she’s happy with the resources and education NCI Ag in the Classroom has provided the students at CCS.

“They just offer so many amazing things and are a great resource,” she said. “It’s very hands-on, it’s very informative, it’s very current.”

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
CCS third grader Andrew Heath takes notes on the development of the classroom chicken eggs on Monday.