Nature at Chater Infant School

  Day 8 Over the weekend the last egg hatched.  Now we have five ducklings in Nursery.   The newest duckling is much smaller than the ones which hatched first.  Look at the difference in sizes in this picture! This shows how quickly the ducklings grow in the first few days. Today the ducks had their very first swimming lesson!  We put the ducklings in some water in the sink and they were able to swim straight away.  They enjoyed splashing in and out of the water.  Watch this video to see how much fun they were having.  After they had a swim the adults needed to dry the ducklings with a towel as their feathers are not yet waterproof.   Did you know.... Adult ducks have waterproof feathers.  Ducks have a preen gland near their tails and this makes an oil which ducks rub onto their feathers.  The oil stops the feathers becoming water-logged and helps keep them dry.

Day Five Another duckling hatched overnight so now we have 4 ducklings in Nursery.   Here are some pictures of children in Nursery handling the ducklings!

Day Four We had no more hatching today so we still have 3 ducklings and 2 unhatched eggs.  We have named the ducklings as they have quite different markings and colours. This is Spot.  It has spots of yellow on the back. This is Patch.  It is mostly yellow with patches of brown. This is Robin.  It has a yellow breast like a robin has a red breast!

  Egg-citing News Day 3  We have had two more ducklings hatch in Nursery this week!  Now we have 3 ducklings and two eggs left to hatch. Yesterday the children enjoyed holding them on their laps and learning how to gently stroke them.  Some children even meet them during the Curriculum Evening! The ducklings are learning to eat and drink this week.  They needed a little help first, adults wriggled their fingers in the food to get the ducklings excited so they started pecking.  Once one duckling had learnt to drink from the water container, the others quickly copied!

   Day 2: Tuesday Here is a picture of the eggs in the incubator in Nursery this morning.  We had 5 eggs delivered on Monday.   First the children predicted what they thought might hatch out from the eggs.  Ideas included snakes, crocodiles, chickens, ducks and dinosaurs!! We also predicted what day they would hatch. This afternoon one of the egg hatched over lunchtime.  We looked closely at pictures of baby animals, looked at the shape of the beak and worked out that we had a duckling!  It was a brown and yellow colour.   Now we have 4 eggs and 1 duckling. We are hoping more ducklings may have hatched by the morning.  Come back tomorrow to find out more!

  Day One We have some very egg-citing news!   Yesterday the Nursery Class have had a very special delivery from a farm in Norfolk.  We had 5 eggs delivered to Nursery.  We are keeping them warm in an incubator and waiting to see if they will hatch.   We have started predicting what day the eggs will hatch.   What day do you think the first egg will hatch?   Come back and read the blog each day to see if you made a good guess!