Spring, a season of rebirth and new life. Many people fondly recall the thrill as child to hold that soft little yellow fuzz ball called a “peep-peep”.
Some Tucker County elementary students are experiencing not only that joy but learning some principles of science in the process thanks to the generosity of a Parsons High School alumnus.
For the second year in a row, elementary students of both Davis-Thomas and Tucker Valley are getting hands-on experience raising baby chicks from eggs in an incubator. The students range in grades one through four. Last year’s experiment had slight success but not for lack of enthusiasm, rather a power outage that happened during incubation. This year both schools received about 18 eggs each. The eggs were donated by Southern States in Elkins and consisted of three different breeds: Ameraucana, Barred Rock, and Rhode Island Red.
I was fortunate enough to tag along with Board of Education Vice-President “Bud” Parsons and Parsons High School alumnus, Harry Sommerville as they visited the students at D.T.E.M.S. . Sommerville, affectionately known as “the chicken man” by the children, was responsible for the implementation of the project in our schools. Sommerville now lives in Akron, Ohio where he participates in a project called Chickquest which does the same thing in multiple schools there. He brings their surplus teaching materials here for our classrooms to use, arranges for the eggs, and has donated things needed for the project. He is already planning for next year’s project but at seventy plus years doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be making the trip back home to Tucker County to do this program with the children. He stressed that this is a necessary “real-life” science project that the children draw incredible knowledge from. Sommerville hopes that Tucker County might be able to find some sort of funding/grants for the project when he is no longer able to do it.
“So much of what kids learn today comes from a computer or I-pad, they’ve lost touch with the real life process,” Sommerville said as we chatted.
He said that given a chance, kids will process and formulate conclusions, especially scientific ones, better when they have something real in front of them, lessons that make an impression for a lifetime. Judging by the enthusiasm of the thirty or so students the day we visited, Sommerville is right. Students who participated last year pelted out information right and left about the hatching process, information that would make even a farmer proud. They knew that it takes about 21 days for the eggs to hatch and what temperature they needed along with the fact that they need humidity too. They have a large poster that shows day-by-day development of the embryo to chick.
Unofficially, one of the teacher’s favorite parts of the program may be the understanding that while the eggs are incubating and especially when it’s time for them to hatch the students have to remain quieter than normal. The unhatched chicks can hear and shy away from noise for fear of a predator lurking.
Students gave examples of the things they learned from last year’s project. They learned about weights, balance scales, took circumference measurements, named parts of the eggs, and figured volume by water displacement. They learned about the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs, learned about the embryos and they “candled” the eggs to see the babies. The students reminded each other of the experiments they did with eggs in corn syrup and vinegar and the effects that had on the eggs.
The program even inspired a Davis-Thomas middle school student, Raesi Anderson, to start raising chickens. Upon hearing about last year’s project from her mother, Lisa, a teach at D.T.E.M.S., she was envious of the younger students and wanted to bring that same experience to herself and other youngsters and now has chickens of her own at home.
When asked why they liked science and especially the Chickquest program the students gave several different answers: “It’s fun. Because you can learn about different things. You can learn how to take care of things.”
