Fort Mill preschoolers getting an organic lesson

Preschoolers at Smart Kids Child Development Center aren’t pondering whether the chicken or the egg came first. It’s clearly the eggs.

But the chickens are coming.

Jessica FitzGibbon and Kiersten Rosborough have more than a dozen 3- and 4-year-olds. The teachers wanted a fun lesson, but also one that would last. So they found an organic egg farmer in Clover and, well, hatched a plan. Now the classroom has seven eggs in an incubator with mid-March due dates.

“She gives us the eggs and we give her the chicks back after they hatch,” FitzGibbon said. “It’s a good way to show children about nature, how it works and how we play a role in it.”

By the time most locals get to dyeing eggs for Easter, students at Smart Kids will observed several exotic varieties of chicken from shell to sendoff back to the farm. There are two salmon faverolles, two frizzle top hat crosses and three white sultans. Then, there are “dark brown mystery eggs.”

Ben Rumberger cut out colorful strips of paper and glued them onto a sheet, showing how he thinks the chickens may look once they arrive.

“They have feathers on them,” he said. “I love them.”

Sophia Mohammad stuck cotton balls onto another class project, one for each egg. What has she learned about eggs?

“They’re going to hatch,” she said.

FitzGibbon, a Nation Ford High School graduate who was active in Future Farmers of America and went on to study animal science, also has plans for a garden out back of the preschool with lettuce and other plants. It’s part of a larger effort to increase food and natural literacy for students who increasingly are steered toward technology.

While there may have been a time when many Fort Mill children had a working knowledge of chicken and eggs through farms at home, FitzGibbon said, many children today are less familiar.

“It’s kind of bringing them back to their natural roots,” she said.

With a rotating incubator keeping them warm and a blue tape line on the floor giving them space from curious children, the question isn’t whether the eggs will hatch. It’s when. The best guess from the farmer puts the start of hatching on a Friday. It could take an hour, or much longer.

“It can take up to 48 hours after the first one hatches for it all to be complete,” FitzGibbon said.

She is less worried about the possibility of spending some extra time at work on the weekend as she is the eggs hatching while students are home. But, she figures, that’s nature. Even if the students show up on a Monday to an incubator full of chicks, their teacher expects they will take it in stride.

“They love watching the incubator turn the eggs,” FitzGibbon said. “They love watching it. They go over there and talk to them, they whisper to them. They love this project so much.”

This story was originally published February 29, 2016 at 5:23 PM with the headline "Fort Mill preschoolers getting an organic lesson."