We have also been learning about the life cycle of a duck as well in Science and we have been glued to the incubator in class watching and waiting for a small change in the eggs.
Eggs need to put in an incubator to help keep them warm and needs to be kept at a constant temperature of 37.5 degrees. We made a calendar to keep track of the eggs but Miss Varley miscalculated the hatching of the eggs by a week, getting them confused with chicken’s eggs.
Duck eggs take around 26-31 days to hatch whereas a chicken’s egg is much shorter at 21 days. We made sure that we put water in the incubator every 3 days to keep the humidity at the same level.
After a couple of days of being in the incubator, we used a special egg torch to shine a light through the eggs to see if the egg had fertilised yet. We saw a small red spot underneath the shell and veins had started to appear. We had baby ducklings on the way!
After a few weeks, we noticed that one of the eggs had started to crack and hatch out of the egg. It is a tiring process, hatching out of the egg but eventually we had our first duckling. We took a class vote and named the first duckling ‘Puddle’. The class decided that the rest of the names has to follow a theme and they chose water related names.
It wasn’t long until we had duckling number 2 and 3 to join Puddle. They were named Bubble and Splash and enjoyed meeting the children and exploring the water for the first time. They need to be kept warm in a special hatcher to help their soft, downy feathers to dry out and stay fluffy.
Miss Varley managed to catch duckling 4 and 5 hatching out of their egg. The blood that you can see is the veins from the eggs and not from the duckling at all. We named the new ducklings Raindrop and Pearl.
Do you notice that not all the ducklings are the same? Some are yellow and some are a lot darker in colour. This is because they are two different kinds. The children were set the challenge in researching for their homework what kind of ducklings we had. Have you found the answer yet? Check the comments section for the answer in a couple of days. 
Which duckling is your favourite? We have loved having the ducklings in class with us. Some of the class keep chickens at home and have offered our ducklings a home so we hope to keep you updated with their progress soon.
What we have been learning about:
- How to handle ducklings
- How to care for ducklings
- The life cycle of an egg
- Keeping a calendar to track progress
- Different parts of a duckling
What you could do to support your child at home:
- Research the type of duckling we have
- Visit a farm or zoo to see different life cycles in process
pearlY2princeedward 