Students get life lessons with hatching classes

PHIL CAMPBELL — Students at Phil Campbell Elementary School and Phil Campbell High School recently got some handson lessons about animal life cycles and agriculture through classroom hatching projects involving quail and chickens.

Local farmer Kayla Frederick provided quail eggs to pre-K classrooms taught by Christi Tyra and Maggie Fowler at Phil Campbell Elementary School, and chicken eggs to the agriculture department at Phil Campbell High School.

Frederick said she wanted students to experience something she never had the opportunity to see growing up.

“I think it’s good for the youth to see the development of life in the early stages,” Frederick said. “Growing up, I never got to watch an egg hatch. So, it’s something that I have let my kids experience, and I wanted other kids to experience it, too.”

Students in two Pre-K classrooms at PCES watched quail eggs hatch.

Frederick said she proposed the classroom hatching project last year while her children attended the school.

Maggie Fowler, a pre-K teacher at PCES, said students were eager to watch the quail eggs hatch. She said the classroom project is giving students an opportunity to connect lessons about animals and farms with something they are observing firsthand.

Fowler said hands-on activities are especially important in pre-K and help students learn more about farms and where eggs come from.

“A lot of them only see eggs in a grocery store,” Fowler said.

Students gathered around the incubators as the quail eggs began to hatch in the classroom.

“It was awesome to see them hatch,” said four-yearold Grayson Berry. “It’s cute to watch them.”

Kyler Berryman, 5, noticed details about the chicks immediately after they hatched.

“At first, they looked weird because the eggs were blue,” Berryman said. “I enjoyed learning about them and watching them hatch. They wiggled and rolled around and didn’t walk very well.”

“It was cute,” Emma Riner, 5, said. “I liked watching them peck their way out of the egg and watching them come out of their eggs.”

The hatching lessons extended to PCHS where agriculture teacher Caleb Beason said the chicken project helps students learn about the poultry life cycle and poultry science industry.

Phil Campbell eighth graders Elizbeth Salguero and Addie Gilbert are helping care for chickens they watched hatch.

Beason said students follow the poultry life cycle from incubation through the chicks’ early growth as part of classroom activities. He said students incubated 24 eggs at the high school this year, with 16 chicks hatching successfully.

Senior Derek Mays said he helped assemble the brooder box in industrial maintenance class. Mays said he enjoyed both helping build the brooder box and watching the chicks grow after hatching.

Beason said students helped monitor food, water, temperature and humidity levels while caring for the chicks.

“I really like watching them grow and seeing life come out of it,” said eighth grader Elizbeth Salguero. “It’s very fascinating. I like seeing them grow little by little.”