We tried to rehome it at short notice but like most people looking to offload a cockerel we had no chance. So at 10pm on Monday night after trying to completely blackout the cockerels coop we decided that if that didn’t keep him quite to a reasonable hour that was it. So we went to sleep.

At 5.30am I woke up to the chickens morning call. By 6am I’d grabbed it mid crow and dispatched it. Its an awfully weird experience sitting on your back door step watching the sun come as you pluck a chicken. Especially when you live in a town as large as the one we live in! It was round about now that I realised that we never got any photos of Glen, as that was what we named him, before his run in with the broom handle. I’ll stick a LJ-cut style thing in here I think to spare those that may be squeamish from the pics.

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WisdomBeginsInWonder.com is a blog run by a proud parent who writes about great stuff for kids on the Internet. With a 3 kids, a dog, 3 cats, and a couple of chickens, Bob is upfront about not being able to grow his blog into a huge media sensation. But with categories like Books, Science, Parenting, & Toys, Bob has truly built a great place on the net for parents and kids alike. I really like Bob’s philosophy on embracing the Internet WITH kids instead of shielding it from them. I think its a great way to teach kids from an early age how to be responsible and cautious online. Bob takes great joy in teaching his kids by letting his inner geek shine through.

Thank you Jeff

photo credit: aliwest44

I’m not sure who’s idea it was but my wife managed to source an incubator and 10 eggs for the toddlers to hatch. The nursery got right into the swing of things and the daily activities involved things to do with the eggs and how to look after the chicks when they hatched. Everything was going great and I think they were prepared for the odd one or two eggs that didn’t hatch and maybe a couple of chicks that wouldn’t make it past a day or two before passing away. What they were not prepared for was precisely what happened though. Not one single egg hatched. Something happened at the 4-5 day mark which caused the eggs to stop developing. It could have been a powercut or any number of things but until the day they were due to hatch we didn’t know how bad it was going to be.

We were gutted when only 5 of our 14 eggs hatched the first time we tried it so I can only imagine how a group of toddlers might feel when none of them hatched. We managed to lend them our Indian Runner Ducks that had hatched a few days before so they got their fix of small fluffy animals eventually but I can’t help feeling the kids lost out by not seeing their eggs hatch. It’s been great watching our kids get used to the chickens and the ducks. I’ve always been worried that Nairn would hurt them but he’s always so gentle when he’s handling them. Fair enough he still chases them about when they are in the garden and has been known to throw a kick at them and never make contact but he’s learning so much. Not just about the chickens but about life in general from seeing these wee fluff balls grow up.

It has been a busy weekend but thats no excuse. I’ve just checked the drafts sitting waiting to be finished off for this block and theres at least 5 articles almost finished with another 3 just needing a little work done to them. Whats the problem you may ask? Well I just can’t find a way to finish them off that I’m happy with. I even started rewriting some of them completely which just makes things worse.

photo credit: nics_events

One of the good things that came from all this however is that I’m starting to see things my kids could learn just from the processes involved in blogging. You are taught in school from an early age about how writing is structured and over time you learn how to plan out exactly what you are going to write before you write it. Which brings me to an idea that I’ve had kicking about for a while. A lot of people have problems with their children having a presence on the internet or even just having their photo uploaded in a public space somewhere. Personally I don’t see that much of a problem with it but everyone has their own limits. About the only thing I worry about is posting photos of my kids where they would be easily identifiable but then again I’m sort of like that with photos of myself anyway.

But on to the idea. I’ve seen many blogs out there written by young kids but actually typed up by their parents. If your wanting your kids to learn anything from blogging taking their words and fixing them so that they are grammatically correct and are spelled perfectly is the wrong way to go. Hopefully I’ll be able to encourage my step-son to ‘guest’ post on here in the near future. Kids these days may be more computer literate than previous generations but with text and l337 speak all the rage their grasp of the written language is sadly lacking. Hopefully this will encourage him to write about more than what his teacher asks him to write in his handwriting books at school.

It was the Easter Holidays this past weekend which sort of explains my absence from blogging but it’s mostly down to the chickens. I’m going to be blaming a lot on the chickens from now on…

Due to a bad run of weather at the tail end of last week we unfortunately didn’t manage to get the chicken run built but we did manage to finish off sealing/painting the coop before the birds turned up. Our garden is fully enclosed so finishing the run wasn’t that important but it does need finished before my wife returns to work this week so you can guess what my plans are for this evening!

On Saturday we drove out to a local village to meet someone that my wife had met on the Practical Poultry forums. After having a look around his garden and his setup I think my wife was insanely jealous but we came away with our two birds as well as a good few eggs for our incubator. Since then I have been trying to fit in building the run with the help of #2 and trying to fit in some quality time with the rest of the family.

So far I’ve managed to get a basic frame up which will let us get the wire mesh on tonight after a little bit of strengthening and once we’ve sourced the roofing we’ll get that on at a later date.

I’m not a carpenter as this picture will testify but hopefully it will do the job until we want to improve/update the run in a few years time.

So far from this project we’ve had questions from the kids on genetics, carpentry and sex. I think we’ve managed to answer everything we’ve been asked but some of the questions completely threw me at first! How do you sex baby chicks? How are eggs made? Why do only some of them hatch? Why is that bit of the run bent? I think we’ve came to understand that #1 knows everything there is to know about (as far as a 6 year old knows) about where eggs come from now and what makes a boy chicken and what makes a girl chicken. I’ve also came to understand that #2 isn’t as destructive as we think he is. I’ve never met a child that has the same effect on a room as a hurricane will have on campsite but in the hours that he was helping me his destructive streak turned into creative building session. When I hammered in the nails he spent the next 5 minutes hammering non-existent nails into the wood and checking that it was sturdy. You might think that it was just a son copying his father but he then spent the next 15 minutes building up the track for a wee plastic toy town we keep in our shed. He never does that. He usually plays with the cars and throws everything about instead.

In other news we had a few new additions to the family over the last two days. Our tropical fish managed to have babies. I say tropical fish in general as we had several pregnant fish but we aren’t sure exactly what one gave birth. They are that small that the colours aren’t showing yet so it may be a while. The kids seem really interested in them so we’ll see where that takes us.

We also took delivery of Bunty and Mac today.

Bunty is a Silver Laced Wyandotte bantam and Mac is a Scots Grey. We’ve also got a 15 eggs in our incubator and they are a mix of breeds so well see how they get on.

More updates over the next few days. I promise!

photo credit: rbrwr

Only four more days until the World Film photography Day on the 20th March. Get your film camera out and take a few photos on the day. Get your kids a disposable camera and get them photoblogging for the day. Annoy your partner by chasing them about your house with your kids all with cameras in hand. Get out and about and take some serious photos and maybe take your kids along and show them the ropes.

Once you’ve done that get the films developed and get busy posting them up on the internet for everyone to see.

Remember back when I first mentioned this day? The website I mentioned that was holding a blog carnival is still looking for submissions right up until the 20th March. As you may have picked up from the comments on earlier post I ‘won’ the disposable cameras and they arrived on Friday so we’re all looking forward to this coming Thursday so we can get out and about and use them.

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.

So if things move about or the site fails to even load, crosses fingers that won’t happen, then just check back in a short while and it should hopefully have settled down.

Theres a few issues that I’m aware of currently but these are mostly the obvious ones so if you spot anything that you think I may miss please let me know.

We’ll get back to updates of an educational nature later in the week

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