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.

I’ll admit right from the start it was the BBC’s kids program Balamory that reminded me of this one.

Now anyone can get the kids running about on a treasure hunt with a little preparation beforehand but it’s an ideal opportunity to get them learning something.

Every year the BBC runs Spring Watch and Autumn Watch in conjunction with its main channels and its children’s channels. It usually entails one man hiding out on a Hebridean island watching out for seals and a few more hiding in a portacabin full of screens showing the feeds from the various nests they planted cameras in. One of the things PC Plum has the kids doing is going out and spotting various animals and marking them down in their notepad whilst telling them a wee bit about each animal.

Taking this and mixing it up with the traditional treasure hunt can have the kids enjoying themselves and at the same time causing them much distress when they find out they’ve actually learned something as well.

Our local park has a petting zoo where the kids can run about as much as they want but each cage has a small plaque telling you something about the animal. Pick 10 animals and give the kids some pens and paper and send them off to find them all. Obviously some kids are going to want to ‘win’ that bit more than the others and finish the hunt before everyone else so why not get them to find out the most interesting thing they can about each animal on the list. That way its not about who gets back first but who put in the most effort to learn about the animals that might win the prize.

Obviously that limits the hunt to those kids that can read and write but theres plenty of ways to get the younger kids joining in or even tailoring the game so they can play on a more even footing. How about having them photograph the items as well as added proof that they did actually find everything on the list. I’d draw the line at that though as I think forcing them to appear in the photo with that days paper on show may be taking it a bit to seriously.

Keeping with the nature theme you could have them find as many different kinds of trees as possible and in the autumn you could score it by having them pick up the leaves.

Anyone else do something similar or have any ideas for other themes for the hunts?