Grade 12 Students Help Launch Chicken Project | From AIS with L♥ve

The Chicken Project at AIS involves 15 chickens and the help of our entire school. Starter Class and PreSchool students helped look after the fluffy, little chicks in their classroom. They are full grown hens now and successfully made the move outside to their barn near the Early Years playground. MYP and PYP students help look after them and keep their barn clean. DP students helped convert a shed into a barn for chickens as part of their Creativity, activity and service (CAS) Project. As they get ready for graduation at the end of this week, we chatted with some of the Grade 12 students who helped make this possible. Here are Leo, Maurits and Thomas in their own words.

Leo: They proposed this to us at the beginning of Grade 11. We all got together during the CAS IB week and we decided to do this for the PYP students. We thought it was a good initiative because it would create an outdoor learning space for our younger students and it might teach them how to take care of living animals. We thought it was a really nice didactic thing to do. First, we looked at the shed and emptied all of it in two afternoons. We brought it all to another shed. Then, this shed was finally free to work in. Then another time we came to clean it up and cut some pieces of wood, building some chicken nesting boxes. 

After that we came to a bit of a hiatus because the pandemic started. We had exams and the summer passed. The school then put a new roof up. Once we came back, I emailed and took the project back in our hands. We cleaned the shed one afternoon and then we started building the nesting boxes. We recycled two old library shelves and we made chicken nesting boxes out of them by cutting up pieces of wood that weren’t used anymore and by nailing them together. 

Maurits: I joined AIS in Starter Class when I was three years old. When we were asked by one of the Primary teachers to create a project on this playground, we were curious to see if we could turn this shed into a barn. When I was a kid, I was playing on this playground myself and this was always the old shed that was behind the bushes. So we got together, had some meetings and discussed it with the Primary School Principal and it was accepted. It was a big goal, because it seemed unachievable at first to turn this old shed into a barn, but we are proud we were able to complete the project.

Sadly, COVID hit and we were worried we couldn’t continue and complete the project. But we were lucky Mr Wayne took over while we were gone. Then when we were back, we had to build the nesting coops which are now inside the barn. There were also a lot of little things we had to do. 

AIS is a community. We are a small school. Everyone supports each other and has each other’s back. That’s why it’s beautiful to do a project like this where you can use everyone’s skills to create something like this. I’m happy that after 15 years at the school I made some sort of positive change and I was able to contribute to bettering the school in some sort of way. And create a nice, new way of learning for the little kids to have them interact with animals and connect with them and feel empathy for animals and so on. 

Thomas: I joined the CAS project 1 ½ years ago when Maurits told me about the idea. I just saw a full shed of things we had to move out. It took a long time. We had to make sure it would be safe for the chickens. It was a nice idea to teach the children to play a role with animals. We thought it was a pretty nice idea and I’m pretty happy I collaborated with my friends on this project. I started AIS in Grade 9. A lot of grades are participating in this project. AIS not only stands for international mindedness but also collaboration. I know everyone from my grade and we’re really connected to everyone in the entire school. So to connect grades, even in the hard times of COVID, it’s really a good idea to have a project like this that we can all work on and see the finished idea when we’re all done. I just loved working with my friends.