My wife’s always been an animal lover and it seems we have a new project on the go. Ever since we first met she’s wanted to have chickens. Even when we lived 3 stories up she wanted to have chickens!

Anyway in just under two weeks time the first batch of chickens will be arriving so we’ve got a lot of work to get done in preparation. This weekend we have to get the garden cleared, the coop put in place and the run built. It’s been a good few years since I built anything on a scale like this so I’m eager to see how things turn out but I’m also looking forward to building it with the help of my 6 year old step son and my 2 year old.

photo credit: thegreenpages

There are lots of things to take into account when building the run such as making it fox-proof and the like so almost everything we do I’m going to have to explain why we’re doing it. Why dig and lay the fence under the ground for example.

Most of all though it’s the first step in our plans for getting home grown food on our plate. We’ve got a vegetable patch to set up as well but its the life cycle of the chickens that I think will have the biggest impact on the kids. We’re starting off with a few hens to see how things go but pretty soon we’ll have an incubator and will be hatching our own and there is the very real chance we will be eating our chickens. Whilst I’m perfectly happy with this I can see our kids quickly becoming vegetarians overnight. If you explain where beef comes from to our eldest he screws his face up and says thats disgusting but will still eat it the next time it’s put in front of him. I think it may be a different story if he seen the animal pecking away in our garden the day before it ends up on his plate though.

Well if you live in the US and Canada that is. Well most of Canada. If you live in Quebec you can whistle for it apparently.

Lego Systems Inc have announced the 2nd annual Creation Nation Creativity Awards. Kids between 6 and 13 have to come up with a way to get around everday challenges and submit a paper for the chance to win $5,000 to go towards things like craft supplies or lessons.

With over 1,000 kids entering last year the competition is going to be tough but if you have that spark of an idea you have to be in it to win it.

Thanks to Geekdad for the heads up

Whilst Stumbling around the net last night I came across a great web site. Physics.org is a website run by the Institute of Physics and is firmly aimed at the children and non-physicists out there.

From interactive experiments and videos to try at home to a physics specific search engine and guidance for education and your career it seems to cover ever stop. What grabbed my attention most though were the Marvin and Milo comic strips. Every month they perform a new experiment but the strip doesn’t just show you them doing experiments it also tells you what you need to perform the experiment, how to do it and an explanation of what happens. All this in a brightly coloured comic strip that would appeal to a kid right up until they get to their teenage years.

Once they hit their teens however the site has a whole Physics to Go video section to keep them amused. Beats them making Diet Coke/Mentos rockets at any rate. The revision advice from ages 11 - 16 points you mostly to the BBC Bitesize web sites but for kids aged 16+ there is a great deal of information ranging from how to study and what kind of exams you might face as well as information on resits and how to best go about them.