Chick Study Day Three

We finished the last two lessons about chicken from Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock:

Lesson 6: Feet

-The functions of feet

-Chicken are fast runners (didn't know that!)

-Compare chicken's feet with duck's feet.

Lesson 7: Chicken ways

- Chicken communicate through different way of clucking, cheeping, peeping, etc - Never realized that! I thought they just keep clucking away without reason instead different way of clucking has different meaning!

Besides using the handbook, I also found some interesting things from the net and I decided to make them into part of our Chicken study. Today, we look at some of the different breeds of chicken - there are over 100 breeds! 

We also study a little bit about egg today, we will continue this the next lesson and that led me to my GREAT DISCOVERY- I discovered yesterday through internet researching, hen doesn't need rooster to have eggs! It is just that the egg she has without a rooster is unfertilized egg and will never hatched!!!! Eggs that we buy from stores are mostly unfertilized eggs! I never know that! And almost everyone I talked to, never knew that either! 

We put some of these info in a page:

Inside the little yellow chick ("Growing Up") we include the following info:

- Chick grow a comb at about 3 weeks old, in other words, Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom are not yet 3 weeks old;

-Chick usually considered fully grown by 6 months old;

- Hen starts laying egg at about 18-20 weeks old;

-She lays 1 egg at a time

-She can lay egg every 24-26 hours.

I also printed out 4 short stories about chicken and let Den read to me one story a day. I get a lot of this idea from lapbook page at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/chicken.php but I decided not making a lapbook, just make some note pages and I will stable them together when we are done.

Chick Study Day Two

This is going to be just a short input. Tired...just came back from Maundy Thursday service...and it is 130am...but hubby will be around the next few days so might not have much time to update...better do it now.


We didn't have time to really study on Wed but Den still get to spend 30 min or so playing with them. Today she played with them for about an hour and I asked her to pay more attention to their wings, eyes, ears, nose and beak. It was really amazing how much she observed by her self just by pointing her to the right direction.


We covered three lessons from the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock....I learned so many new things today! To a point, I think homeschooling is to homeschool the mom and not the child!


Lesson 3: Wing:
- We experimenting with Umbrella to show how the overlapping wings feathers help chick fly;


- We talked about the function of chick's tail - act as rudder and also help to fly


Lesson 4: Eye and Ear
- We found their ears...we knew they have ears since Chicka Chicka and Boom Boom (their name) has been responding very well to Den's voice...come running to her whenever she calls...and they love music, whenever Den play piano, they will sing too...but we never knew where are the ears located...today we found them. ^^


- Den observed that chick has only lower eyelids.


- I saw the film lid that came out from the corner of chick's eyes and cover the eyes like a veil when they first arrived but I never knew what that was... today I learned....and found out even human has the film lid!! At the corner of our eyes near our nose, just that we can't move the film lid like chicks...any more...I need to find out what is the function of the film lid...Den and I guess - to protect the eyes.


- Chick cannot see the same object with both eyes at the same time


Lesson 5: Beak
-Found the nostrils!!


-Compare Duck bill and chick beak


-Functions of beak


-Chick has no teeth and not much sense of smell.




Den also identified different part of a chicken and color it:

While discussing, Den asked me a few interesting questions that I had no answer! But with the help of the internet, we have discovered:

1. The function of Comb and Wattles - (I thought they are just there for deco!!) is to cool down chicken's body temperature

2. How to tell the gender of bb chicks - the best way is to look inside the vent...which I am not going to do! So we settle with the latest way - tell by color of their feather - the lighter will be hen and thus we declare Chicka Chicka as a rooster and Boom Boom a han...the most interesting thing is Den already told me that on the first day they arrived! From their behaviour, Den told me Chicka Chicka is a boy and Boom Boom is a girl! Lets wait and see if we are correct!

There is another GREAT DISCOVERY (to me!!!) but I will leave that for another day.