Getting Your Chicks
Fertilized Eggs or Day-Old Chicks?
Day Old Chicks: At my preschool I have decided to go the other route. We raise chicks each year, and keep them at our school as our pets year round. Every Spring we get day-old chicks from a local urban farming store that I love and trust. It is important to get chicks from healthy and humane farms. I have found that day-old chicks are a great experience for my preschoolers, over eggs, because they will live in the school with us for six weeks before they can move outside. Skipping the hatching phase has worked better schedule-wise.
Where Will They Live?
Baby Chicks are fragile
Making it a Safe Experience
1. Hands away from our face at all times. We keep them in our laps.
2. After we hold them I give the kids hand sanitizer for the walk to the bathroom. Once we are up, keeping our hands away from our face is a little harder for me to monitor, so this makes me feel safer as we wait our turn to get a good wash with soap and warm water.
3. Once we are in the bathroom "I" wash their hands for them. It is important that I wash their hands to make sure we do a thorough job.