Living Root Garden School • Creatures Great & Small • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the egg that sang — something in the yard lays breakfast, hunts bugs, and announces it to the whole neighborhood. Meet the hardest workers in the yard.
A healthy hen lays almost an egg a day during her best months. Brown shells, white shells, blue shells, green shells — the color depends on the breed, not the taste. Inside, they are all the same delicious.
Learn the chicken talk: soft clucking means everything is fine; fast bok-bok-bok means excitement — food arrived; the egg song is a loud, proud clucking fit after laying, announcing it to the entire neighborhood; a loud alarm squawk means danger, and the whole flock freezes or runs for cover.
Chickens are pest patrol and compost crew in one: they eat beetles, grubs, slugs, ticks, and grasshoppers, and they scratch the ground all day with both feet, turning and mixing compost piles for free. Their poop is powerful fertilizer — so powerful it has to be composted first, or it can burn plants.
Chickens eat chicken feed every day as their main food, with garden treats like leafy greens, watermelon rinds, and squash guts as dessert — a little is great, a lot spoils the main meal. And chickens are dinosaurs too, just like every bird.
Ask: If you compare two kinds of eggs side by side, what will be different inside — and what will be the same? Write your guess before you crack them.
Try: Compare two kinds of eggs side by side — shell color, size, and what's inside when cracked — then sketch your dream coop plan. No flock needed.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Run the backyard-egg math: work out one hen's yearly feed cost against a year of store eggs, and see which one wins.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what you saw, what surprised you — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The eggs were different because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw the two eggs side by side, cracked open — what was different inside?
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone what a chicken's egg song means, and why chicken poop has to be composted before it meets plants — in your own words.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can read chicken talk — clucks, boks, and the egg song.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Egg comparison notes + coop plan
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can read chicken talk — clucks, boks, and the egg song.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.