This story was originally posted on May 13, 2025

The room was full of energy and wide-eyed wonder as students in Gustavo Aguilera’s first-grade class at Remington Point Elementary gathered around the incubator. After 21 days of careful observation, it is almost time for the chicks to hatch, and the students couldn’t be more thrilled.

“They’re starting to hatch. The chicks are moving in the eggs and they’re almost ready to start to come out,” said Lizeth Alonso, a student in the class. “The most interesting thing to me is that I didn’t expect that they would look like bread in stage 19.”

This hands-on program, offered in first-grade classrooms across EMS ISD, gives students the opportunity to study the full lifecycle of a chicken, from egg to chick. Even at a young age, students gain a deep understanding of biological processes and can speak confidently about what they observe.

“The most interesting thing I learned from the eggs is that they don’t have food, but they do have food,” said John Muniz. “It’s the yolk from the egg that we eat. The chick eats the yolk and then pecks the shell so they can get out and get fresh air.”

Muniz added that his favorite part is watching the chicks move in the egg under a light, and when they move in their shells as they are getting ready to hatch. 

“Sometimes in the incubators we can see them, and when they move, we come watch them.”

As hatching begins, students are seeing science come to life right before their eyes, and learning lessons that will stick with them far beyond the classroom.

Watch along with the students as the chickens hatch over the next few days with the live incubator camera at www.emsisd.com/cadmchickencam. The incubator camera is located at the EMS ISD Discovery Labs Learning Center in the Dr. Jim F. Chadwell Administration Building.