How did it come up in the first place? Well, children wanted to know why eggs in the store did not contain chicks. It's not just because a hen doesn't sit on them, it is also because the hens that lay eggs for consumption are often isolated from roosters so that fertilization cannot occur. Yup, we eat the eggs of lonely hens. Unless you happen to crack open an egg with a spot of blood on the yolk. That would be the remnants of an embryo that died after being removed from hen or incubator. So I told the kinderfolk that although the hen makes and lays the egg, the rooster must add something in order for the egg to become a chick. The child I have renamed Precocious, ever astute and always on to something, raised her hand and announced, "I already have all the eggs I'm ever going to have and if a man gives it something when I'm big, it will make a baby." It was time to name "something."
It's no big deal to kids to know the word "sperm," only to my colleagues who raised their eyebrows, or cheered or laughed wickedly while rubbing their hands together. It's science and it's truth and if children are asking the questions, they are developmentally ready to know the answers. How the sperm gets into the hen did not cause too much excitement (or analogy) on the children's part, and the fact that chickens mate without penetration made the explanation all the more easy on my part. They actually line up their vents (openings beneath their tails) and the sperm goes from the rooster's vent to the hen's where it eventually finds the egg.
All this because they wanted to know why eggs in the refrigerated section of City Market don't have chicks inside.
And yeah, we could have skipped the word "sperm" and stuck with the word "something," but besides being pointless, children need vocabulary to develop concepts about the world. One word stands for more words. Lay stands for producing and depositing eggs. Hatch stands for an animal coming out of a shell. Those are some pretty wacky ideas if you think about it, as are most things young children come into contact with for the first time. The world is weird and rather than having to remember something so crazy as a chicken growing an egg inside its body and squeezing it out, when "lay" becomes part of a child's vocabulary, when they hear, read or use it, they access it's meaning in their fascinating brains. (We all do). As children come to use vocabulary to express a concept, they gain a deeper and more complex understanding of that concept.
My students' vocabularies have expanded wildly since we began incubating eggs. Even my English language learners who have trouble remembering the words for geometric shapes are using vocabulary from the Wall of Special Chick Words:
develop
candle (verb not noun)
hatch
lay
pipping
male
female
egg tooth
blood vessel
air sac
embryo
prediction
observation
thermometer
temperature
incubator
rotate
The new favorite game in kindergarten is to get in groups of three or four people, be handed a card with one of the above words, figure out how to act it out, and perform their word for the class. Precocious, Sparkles and the Cowboy showed their understanding of the word "develop" by crouching down, then steadily stretching their bodies taller while making muscles and chanting, "smarter, smarter, smarter." To show the words "blood vessel" Neighbor and Fidget lied down with their feet and hands touching to create an egg shape. Annika lied in between them and squiggled her arm like a blood vessel to Pear Blossom, curled up tight as the embryo. Pear Blossom quietly sipped from the blood vessel formerly known as Annika's arm. The applause was deafening.
What's Next?: Teaching them that the embryo gets nutrients from the blood vessels through the abdomen, not the mouth!
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