So after an egg blessing ceremony on March 13th, each of my 18 students placed 6 or 7 quail eggs in the incubator. That's 120 eggs! The eggs are not much bigger than robin eggs, and mostly white to beige in color. Since we were provided with an automatic egg turner, all we had to do was keep the temperature at a steady 99 degrees F and be sure to add enough water to keep the incubator humid enough during the 23 day gestation period. The eggs were scheduled to hatch on Friday, April 7th. Our two week spring break fell during this time, so I arranged for someone to check the temperature and water levels of the incubator every day.

On Friday morning, April 7th, some of the children believed they saw some of the eggs moving. I was not as fortunate until after lunch. It's always a miracle when you first see the once still egg seem to come alive like a kitten who wakes up and starts chasing its tail. No eggs had hatched by the evening, and when I stopped in to school on Saturday morning I was disappointed to find some eggs with cracks in them, but none seemed to be determined to break our of the shell. I came back a few hours later, around 2:30pm on Saturady, April 8th, and lo and behold, there was our first born quail. I watch another peck out of the shell. All toll, by Sunday we had 12 healthy quail and 1 which had broken legs who didn't make it. On Monday, the children were thrilled to observe the new additions. There were seven eggs who had been trying since the day before to get out of their shells. They still were not successful by Monday morning, and some had stopped trying at all. Larry Kraut, another 4th grade teacher and I decided to try to help these 7 out or they would surely die. In the end, one of the 7 lived, but he remained the smallest, or "runt" of the covey, or quail group.

Now it was time to write quail poems, a pass along quail story, take lots of pictures, experience quail flying around the classroom and nearly getting lost on the unpowered ceiling fan one morning before school starte. A few days later, on the day they were to go home with their permanent family, they nearly flew away when we took them out on a beautiful spring day.

The project lends itself to a lot of creativity, scientific observation mathematical predictions and pure wonder. Quail are a lot quieter than chickens, but remember,chickens don't fly...