MONROE COUNTY, Georgia — The first thing you'll see when you walk into Ms. Heather Smith's classroom is the shoe shelves beside your feet.
It's for her second graders who are in charge of the Hubbard Hatchery, the name for their chicken coop and lettuce farm STEM projects.
In the fall, the second graders began raising the eggs in incubators inside Hubbard Elementary School in a faculty/storage room, according to Smith.
As the eggs hatched and grew, so did the hatchery's sponsorships, including Perdue Chicken, Connie Ham, and Forsyth Kiwanis.
Smith said that if it weren't for them, they wouldn't have the coop they needed to raise the chickens outside.
She continued that they would also be unable to create their romaine lettuce farm in the room where the incubators used to be.
It's a great way to feed the chickens in a healthy, economical way. The students are also conducting science experiments with the lettuce, such as testing the effects of light on the plant.
"I just love that they get so excited about it," Smith said. "They wanna go home and share it with their families. A lot of them have their own coops this year through this process. The parents had not thought about getting a coop before, and they were so excited they got their parents excited."
Farmer Josephine "JoJo" Hardy said you can tell the chickens are hens "because they have a mohawk, short tail, feathers, and they're very little."
Farmer Easton Coleman said he can tell when a chicken's ready to be picked up based on its behavior.
Now that the eggs have grown into chickens and laying their own eggs, Smith said the project has come full circle.
Congratulations to Hubbard Elementary on being 13WMAZ's School of the Week.
If you want to feature your Central Georgia School, you can reach out to fabrar1@13wmaz.com.