They had been caring for chicken eggs in classroom incubators for nearly three weeks. Finally, it was Day 21. And the children hoped that would mean chicks. Lots of chicks.

In teacher Shawn Williams' class, the first chick pecked its way out of its brown shell as the day began.

Shortly after 9 a.m., it appeared, wet and reddish, its rapid breathing shaking its entire body as it rested in the open shell.

"Hi, sweetheart. Hi, sweetie. Come on," coaxed Williams, leaning over the incubator, as her kindergartners stopped their journal work to crane their necks in her direction.

"Guys, we have one," she told the class calmly.

A "Yes!" went up in unison from around the room. Then, the kindergartners stood and applauded as they smiled at one another.

They had done it. They had rotated the eggs each day without knocking over the incubator. They had kept the lid on to keep the temperature right about 100 degrees. And eagerly they had watched as their teacher shined a light through the eggs, peering at the shadows of baby chicks so they could track which ones were developing.

By today, they could welcome as many as 17 chicks in Williams' room and 50 chicks across the five kindergarten classrooms at their school.

"What should we name him?" Williams asked as the children lined up for a glimpse.

Pablo Blaisdell had just the name, borrowed from the children's dinosaur movie "The Land Before Time."

"Little Foot," he offered. The other kids crooned "Little Foot" as they looked through the incubator's plastic top.

"He's tired. He's got his eyes closed," Williams said as the children filed past.

Within minutes, Little Foot was hobbling off the shell. Soon the chick resumed peeping, occasionally bumping into the brown eggs all around him. That encourages the other chicks to start breaking through their shells, too, Williams explained.

The children were ready to tell visitors all about the chicks.

"They came from a farm and a chicken," Alan Hunt said.

"We put them in a machine to keep them warm," Daniela Thiele said.

"In the egg, they get bigger and strong enough to break the egg," Jason Hay said.

"It looked cute," said Caroline Wright. "We could see its body. We could see some of its fur. It was trying to get up."

The chicks, given to the school by the 4-H, will go home with a farmer Friday. But first the kindergartners will get a chance to hold and feed them.

With just three weeks of school to go, the hatching project wraps up a year of talking about cycles, including seasons, seeds and animals.

"This is the best time of the year. It seems like everything we've done, we can pull from," Williams said.

Students work for a few minutes, then slip over to the incubator to take a peek. The teacher does, too.

"Every time I see the eggs hatch, it's still amazing," Williams said.