Inside our schools: Lessons built around healthy chicks hatching

When it comes to hatching healthy chicks, incubators with automatic turners won’t do. That’s what Pam Pereira has discovered, and it’s what she wants all educators to realize.

“About four years ago, I got tired of the chicks not hatching healthy,” the owner of Kinder-Magic in Coeur d’Alene explained. “It just wasn’t a good experience, and I thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’ “

So she ditched the automatic turner and switched to turning the eggs by hand.

“We’re putting love into the eggs like a mom would,” she said.

It takes commitment – the eggs need to be turned twice a day for 21 days – but the end result is healthy chicks, Pereira said, not the weak and diseased ones the automatic turners so often produce.

After four years of the old method, a slew of dead chicks and a lifetime of unpleasant memories for her kindergartners, Pereira decided that quitting hatching chicks altogether wasn’t the solution.

“It’s such a wonderful experience, the whole science of it,” she said.

So she began turning the eggs by hand.

And after fours years of doing so, the results speak for themselves.

“We haven’t had a deformed or sick chick since,” she said.

And the time commitment involved in turning the eggs is a good primer for when the chicks are hatched. Their water needs to be changed twice a day, every day, among other things.

Pereira plans lessons around the chicks, like drawing pictures and writing sentences about the animals. Friends of Pereira’s who supply the eggs bring in a hen for the kindergartners to see.

“We go through the whole process of how the chick starts out as an embryo,” she said.

The day the chicks hatch is always remarkable, she said. The kindergartners bring in their families to watch.

“They’re squealing,” Pereira said.

‘Really a neat thing to do’

Two years ago, a group of retired law enforcement officials got together with the plan of providing services for injured first responders who aren’t covered by insurance. Inspired by the story of Mike Kralicek, the former Coeur d’Alene police officer shot and paralyzed in 2004, Addison “Bud” Arce and friends formed the Kootenai County Police and Fire Memorial Foundation Inc.

A board of directors considers requests for money or assistance from area law enforcement and grants them on confidentially.

“We don’t look for publicity; we don’t look for people to pay us back,” Addison said.

But they do look for donations, and they’ve found many helping hands at Hayden Meadows Elementary School.

The fourth-graders in Kristin Childer’s class have donated money to the foundation the past two years. The $509.50 the youngsters gave last year was the foundation’s first donation.

One year and $45,000 in other donations later, the foundation accepted another chunk of money from Childer’s students. This time for $591.07.

“This is really a neat thing to do for the policemen and firefighters,” Mike Murphey, president of the foundation, told the students last week.

Representatives from the area’s emergency response providers, like the sheriff’s department and fire districts, gathered on the school’s lawn to accept the donation from the students. The class raised the money by collecting pennies for one week. Childer’s husband is a sergeant with the Coeur d’Alene Police Department.

“This was the first group to commit funds for us – the very first group,” Murphey said. “That’s why it’s so important to us.”

At the end of the ceremony, each student gave the law enforcement and foundation representatives flowers.

The giving of the donation was timed to coincide with National Law Enforcement Memorial Week.

“It’s important for the kids to understand (that) you give back to the people who give to you,” said Patty Woodruff, Hayden Meadows principal.