Our second Farm School day

We were excited to meet with Farm Teacher Heidi at Morales Farm recently. Today we were going to learn about chickens.

We learned about how chickens are working animals on a farm. They scratch the dirt with their feet to find bugs, which loosens the soil. They eat weeds, which helps the farmer. And their poop (or manure) feeds the soil and makes it good and strong to grow strong plants. We learned that chickens come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, but they all have some of the same body parts.

We visited the chickens in the chicken coop. A farmer has to make sure the chicken's habitat has everything they need: food, water, shelter from the weather and predators, and a place to lay their eggs, and maybe raise babies.

The chickens are not afraid of us, and they went on about their chicken business while we were in their pen. We were able to watch how they move, scratching and pecking, taking a dirt bath, eating and drinking. We could see their different body parts.

We had farm work to do. While some children gathered eggs from the nesting boxes, other children gave the chickens food. Then it was time to put clean straw in their chicken house.

We gathered big armfuls...

... and we spread them out in the house.

Afterwards we washed the eggs. 

We had to be very careful and gentle, as eggs are fragile. Only one egg was squeezed a little too hard.

Look at all of the different colors!

The Farm Teachers gathered kale from the field and scrambled the eggs with the kale. The eggs were yummy!

When we finished snack we got out our Nature Journals. We sat next to the chicken tractor and observed the chickens.

We drew what we know about the chickens in our journals. We will be learning more about birds in the classroom. It will be interesting to learn how wild birds and chickens are the same and different.