Chickens Have Come to Roost on Campus!
Chickens have officially come to roost here on campus, and they already have quite a story to tell!
These five hens hatched right here at school last year, thanks to our Elementary Gifted and Kindergarten students as part of their embryology and life cycles units. What began as an exciting classroom experience has now grown into an ongoing, hands-on learning opportunity for students across our campus.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Florida Farm Bureau, we purchased a chicken coop for our new flock. Our BST 4-H students took on the project of putting the coop together and will help maintain it, allowing them to develop responsibility, teamwork, leadership skills, and real-world animal care experience.
Our students have also found creative and sustainable ways to support our chickens. Using recycled materials, students created a perch for the hens, giving new life to materials that might otherwise have been discarded.
Last year, our fourth-grade students also created a thriving mealworm farm as part of their study of life cycles. That project has continued to grow, and we can now use the mealworms to supplement our chickens' feed. It is a great example of how learning from one classroom can become a resource for another and how projects can continue to benefit our students long after a unit has ended.
The chickens have become a wonderful example of learning by doing. Students are able to see firsthand how concepts they learn in the classroom connect to agriculture, animal science, sustainability, responsibility, and environmental stewardship. They also get to experience the rewards and responsibilities that come with caring for living things.
As we continue to grow our 4-H campus program, we are looking for community sponsors to help provide feed for our hens. We would love to partner with local businesses and families who would like to support this unique learning experience for our students.
We are also exploring some fun fundraising ideas that could involve our students and families. One idea we are considering is allowing students to help sponsor the chickens and earn the opportunity to name one of our hens. We think this could be a fun way to get the school community involved while helping provide for the ongoing care of our flock.
We are also planning to reach out to the local feed store in Oak Hill to see if they might be interested in sponsoring the chickens' feed. We welcome any other ideas or community connections that could help us continue to make this project successful.
And for those wondering about the sign on the hen house, it is only temporary. A custom sign featuring BST 4-H is currently being created and will be coming soon.
We are excited to watch our flock become a permanent part of our campus and to see all the ways our students continue to learn from them. What started with an embryology lesson has grown into a campus-wide project that brings together science, agriculture, sustainability, leadership, and hands-on learning.
Our chickens may have come to roost, but the learning is just getting started!
The Burns Flock:
