#SOL18 Day 27
“What’s that thing Mrs. H.?”
Several students pointed to the overhead projector that was near my desk this morning when they arrived.
“It’s called an overhead projector. It’s what we used to use before we had a document camera.” I replied as I walk across the room.
“What’s that thing then?” Alice asked as she pointed to the projector hanging from the ceiling.
“Well, that’s a projector too but it’s different than this one.” I said placing my hand on the archaic device.
“What’s that one for then?” Geoffrey asked pointing to the overhead.
“We’ll be using it later in the day to look at our eggs.” I answered.
There were shouts of “COOL!” and “Wow!” before settling into our morning routine.
Today was day 7 of incubation which meant we could candle the eggs to see if they were fertilized. To candle the eggs we needed to darken the room. There was much excitement as I lowered the blinds and rolled the projector to the front of the room. There was as much interest in the overhead projector as there was about the eggs.
The projector is used with a candling box, a shoe box lid with a hole cut in it the size of an egg. The light shines through the egg to reveal whether or not the egg is fertilized. A fertilized egg will begin to have blood veins visible by day 7.
We have 7 eggs in our incubator and at least 5 are fertilized. We’re hopeful the other two are just developing a little slower. If you look closely at the photo (the best I could do in the dark with my phone) you can see some blood veins in egg #3, one of our Welsh Harlequin ducks.
After candling the 7 eggs my scientists got to work drawing diagrams of egg #3. They colored their eggs yellow and orange and labeled the blood veins and the air cell of the egg. They were excited to see the development inside the eggs. Soon there will be questions about how the eggs got fertilized but that will be a slice for another day!
Teaching from an Empty Nest 