Welcome 2012-2013 Preschoolers

I want to welcome everyone to a new preschool year in Fairfield. By now, everyone should have received a mailing from me with an introduction letter and a preschool program handbook for the year. 

I will be spending the time before we start preschool on September 4th getting the new classroom organized, visiting new preschool students at home, and having open house on Thursday, August 30th at 9:00 am. 

We have moved to the classroom at the end of the hall across from Amy Day's kindergarten room. This space is larger and allows us to accommodate more students. We have 17 preschool students enrolled for this year.

Preschool hours will be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8:15 to 12:00. We will follow the Fairfield School calendar. A copy of the preschool version of that calendar is in your handbook.

I look forward to working with you and your child this year.

 

Second Annual Launch Day

I think this video says it all. A HUGE thanks to Bennett Dawson for sharing his rocketry skills and his enthusiasm for preschool space exploration.

More on the Birds

When I left the school at 4:30 today, we were up to 14 chicks. I moved 10 over to the brooder and the other 4 still need some more drying out time. 


It appears that the iPad as a webcam is not as wonderful as it seemed. The live stream ends up timing out eventually. Thus, there is no live stream tonight, but I will get it up and running again when I am back in the classroom in the morning. 

Chicken Update

As of 10:41 this morning, we have 13 hatched chicks.  I have moved 7 chicks over to the brooder box, where they can eat some chicken feed and drink some water. 

I changed the live camera over to the iPad. UStream has a great app that is allowing me to use the iPad camera. Wish I had thought of that 2 nights ago. I left the microphone on, hoping that maybe the peeping will come through the live video. 

I also added a second Live Stream for the brooder box so you can see the fluffy chickens mulling around. From what I can tell, they like to get a lot of sleep...just like baby humans!

The Chickens are Coming! The Chickens are Coming!

Tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday, we should see our chickens emerging from their shells. You can click on play on the webcam to the right of this blog entry. I apologize for the ads, but it is a free way to stream our chickies live.

They have been incubating for 20 days. Tuesday is day 21...Hatch Day! There may be an early bird or two tonight. The majority should hatch tomorrow. There also may be a few late bloomers that hatch on Wednesday.

We have been checking the embryos' development by "candling" the eggs. We shine a light through the egg in a dark place (the preschool bathroom). The egg will show a dark spot where the developing chick is. When we last candled, we thought we could see a good 15 chicks that were developing. There were a few that did not look like they were fertilized at all. And then there were about another 15 that were too dark to be able to tell what was going on in the egg.

I am quite sure a few will hatch. As I am typing this next to the incubator, I keep hearing peeps from inside the eggs.  YAY!!! That's a good sign.

Here is the Fairfield Preschoolers' version of the Donald Crews book Ten Black Dots.

Monthly Podcast

Here is our latest podcast from the preschool. 

Tips on How to be a Good Friend.