4-H I Sarah Feider, 4-H Program Educator
A four-week hands-on Chick Quest program for three groups of 21 youth in 3rd grade, where participants incubated and observed chicks while learning about the chick and egg life cycles, identifying the parts of a chick and egg, and designing engineering solutions through egg-drop challenges. Through this experience, youth developed science, problem-solving, and observation skills while gaining a deeper understanding of animal development and agriculture.
“Yay, The chick lady is back!” – Commented one student during the second week of Chick Quest.
Youth have never incubated chicks or learned about their life cycle. This was an opportunity to allow youth to gain insightful information about chicks and watch them grow and change in real time. The 4-H Chick Quest program has been an excellent curriculum to reach the needs of teaching youth about food, animal science and agriculture. It also provided an excellent opportunity to partner with a local youth organization. Youth learned about the incubation environment, care for incubating eggs, chick development stages, egg science (parts of the egg), the hatching process and baby chick needs. It also gave me the opportunity to talk about 4-H and what our program offers.
