Chook House Update

This is us! A lovely bunch, a work crew; filmmakers and builders, with enterprising minds, and big plans for a little chook house that just might be a creation of wonder. We are together, and we can do this!

Last week we all met each other, asked questions of each other, found out about each other. We talked about stuff – favourite colours, favourite dinosaurs, favourite subjects at school - learnt about what skills we might bring to our team. Poppy has made claymation short films before; this might be useful. Bea helped her dad build a mezzanine bed in her bedroom (“we made the ladder into a bookshelf”); this is good. Aurelia has a chook coop in her back yard, with three silkie chickens, each of which lay an egg a day (“my parents usually poach them”); we have experts!  

On Friday we discussed the short film we’ll make of the project. “We should sell it to Netflix,” some of the children said. We workshopped ideas. We thought we might include a “chicken dance” scene. One of the working titles of the film was “The little school that could”.

Billy suggested a name for our project: The ultimate SKiPPS chicken coop. 

Other names suggested include ‘Project chicken coop’, ‘Chicken villa’, ‘SKiPPS chicken coop’ and ‘The chook house project’ – but we thought we might open it up to the whole school to decide. 

We also discussed the materials we might use, and Max said he has some spare timber and corrugated iron in his garage at home, and we could use it, so that’s great! Thanks Max! What the workers don’t know yet (are you reading this Hayden? / are you reading this Artzai?) is that we’ll be using almost entirely recycled materials to build our creation. It might look as though it’s always been there, and will be part of the school community for many years to come.

On this, we’re on the lookout for a few bluestone blocks. We’ll build our footings on these. Any have any they don’t need, and could give us? 

We discussed the design and children were asked to come up with some creations over the weekend – put pen or pencil to paper – and look at these amazing considerations! The thought, the imagination, the care, the curiosity. This is what will inspire us! Thank you Apurva and Samira and others for your wonderful ideas.

This Friday, we’ll be unloading and stockpiling materials, and mapping out a plan, and measuring, and discussing our design further, and I know there are a few willing workers keen to get on the tools!

Then we’ll put a call out for any parents who might like to help us on the following Friday (2 June). Reckon that should be the start of our build, in earnest. Will be a lot of timber to saw, and nails to hammer in. 

I think I know one or two young people who might be good at this, and eager to give it a go. And we have Allison in our team also, and she’s great with a hammer!

Until next week,

Dugald

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