Vito’s first chicken encounter. He can’t stop touching, caressing the chicken, and even chasing them when they were freed for feeding. We then borrowed books from the library about farm animals and how to raise a chicken.
This is really a good book if your child wants to learn the life of a chicken in a farm. Everything they wanted to know about poultry, how some eggs turned out in the supermarket, and others are retained for further breeding are discussed in this book. My eldest appreciated this book more though, because he can relate, Vito was more attracted to the pictures and the brief discussions that I had with him.
We then proceeded to learn the life cycle of a chicken. We own Safari Ltd. TOOB Life Cycle of a Chicken and used it for presentation and some hands-on activity. I presented this to Vito and talked about the cycle. Nothing scientific, but a straightforward discussion that the hen lays eggs, and the baby inside grows, becomes a chick and would later become an adult chicken. As I talked about each stage, I would ask him questions like what happened to the egg when the baby chicken is growing inside? Is the chick a bigger version of an adult or a smaller version? What’s the color of the chick? These questions could help a child understand what he’s seeing or reading even if he’s not personally witnessing the growth of a chicken.
When we were done, I gave him the figures so he can try arranging them in the boxes similar to our control chart. He did arranged them correctly but I was impressed in the manner on how he did it. He placed the figures one at a time and he would describe the stage in his own words, in short he’s mimicking my actions. Despite that some of it I can’t truly understand, I heard a lot of words and thought that it did make sense. Like when he described the egg cracking because the baby is growing. And he talked about how fluffy the chick’s yellow feathers are.
The chicken life cycle mats are included in a printable that I sell in my shop, Chicken Life Cycle Sequencing Cards and Posters.
Another extension activity that we worked on is the Life Cycle of a Chicken Layered Puzzle. Such an engaging educational material for kids. He’s too big to work on all the four layers so I am just assisting him on this one. Layered puzzles are his favourite! I talked about the other puzzles he’s using in this post, "Educational Puzzles for Preschoolers", in case you are interested. He loves this puzzle so much!
He showed me how the chicken life cycle safari toob figures matched with the puzzle.
Because he begged that we paint, I printed some outline cliparts of the life cycle and made the boys paint them. They worked on these over the weekend and when the images dried up, they've cut them out and glued the cliparts on an A3 paper to make a poster.
Doing art work is an opportunity to practise fine motor skills. They get to practise their pincer grasp, hand muscles for squeezing and cutting skills.
Now, this is Vito’s final poster work. When he saw that I made some arrows, he immediately took the figures and matched them in the poster. He was so happy to see his work, he looked proud and with a sense of accomplishment!
And that’s about it! Simple yet engaging activities for the kids. We will revisit this life cycle next year and we’ll add some more depth into it. For now, it’s all about exposure and he surely had a great one!
For other animal life cycles you can also check my old posts with FREE learning materials, FREE Life Cycle Matching Cards and Animal Life Cycles (with FREE Learning Material).
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