Faculty from all three divisions at D-E recently took advantage of the animal life that lives on campus for hands-on (and fun!) learning. Beekeepers from our Apiary visited The Imperatore Library on World Bee Day, May 20, to show our PreK 4 class the live bees in our observation hive and give them a lesson on honeybees, complete with a memorable “waggle dance” they could do to emulate the bees collecting nectar. Meanwhile, Sixth Grade Dean Ms. Urbanowski’s DIG (D-E in the Garden) class collaborated with Upper School (US) Science Teacher Ms. Nefdt’s Developmental Biology class to incubate eggs from the chicken coop situated near the Nettie-Louise Coit Teaching Garden on campus. Seventh grader Callie H. ’31 explained that her class had hatched two chicks in the MS Teaching Kitchen, and Upper School students in the STEM Building had hatched two other chicks, so they could study them. Ms. Neft said this was part of a unit on Embryology, in which students carefully tracked the eggs’ 21-day incubation period and compared the embryos of chickens with those of zebrafish. This week, it was time to transfer the chicks, which students had named Dominique and Darwin, from the STEM classroom to the Teaching Kitchen—a process Ms. Urbanowski described as “a ceremonial turning over of responsibility.” We love having Nature’s Classroom right here at D-E!
