Hands on Science
One of the most anticipated events of the spring each year at Hawthorne is the arrival of the ducklings. As has been the tradition for the past 15 years, the incubation and embryology project, generously funded by the elementary PTA, allows second grade students the opportunity to incubate eggs for several weeks in their classrooms and observe the fascinating process of watching a duck develop from an embryo into a duckling. The activity encourages scientific observations and critical thinking while the students learn about the life-cycle process. Thanks to the efforts of second grade teacher Gina Carmody, several class-
rooms had the chance to host the incubators. Eggs were delivered at the beginning of May from several different farms around the country. Throughout the 28 day process, students used a special device called Second graders in Mrs. Carmody’s class used a “candler” to shine light candlers to shine a light through the duck eggs to through the egg which check for signs of life. enabled them to see what was going on inside and better. The students had to work quickly check for signs of life. Mrs. Carmody re- to avoid the danger of the eggs coolmarks, “It’s one of the most fascinating ing down and ceasing to develop. Durparts of the whole process, because you ing their testing, students took detailed can actually watch the duckling develop notes about the development of each through the egg shell from a speck to egg to determine which eggs were viable an actual duckling.” This year, with the hopes that all eggs would sucthe teachers included a begin- cessfully hatch. ner STEM project by having As luck would have it, the majority of the students design and build the eggs were viable and soon enough, their own candlers using com- much to the delight of the children, the mon household items. The classrooms were filled with the sounds class worked together to test of baby ducks quacking. The students which designs worked best spent about a week playing with and and why. They quickly dis- caring for the ducklings before they covered that porous materi- were taken to local farms to live. Stuals such as styrofoam let in dents enjoyed the experience so much, too much light, while heavy they almost didn’t realize all the scienStudents in Mrs. Bartucca’s class enjoy the ducklings. cardboard seemed to work tific concepts they were learning about!
From the Heart • Summer 2019
HES
2nd Grade Moving Up Moments
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