White House Garden

Last week, I was visiting Washington DC with the 8th Grade class from my school. It is an annual trip that bring excitement, experience, exhaustion, and tears for parents, teachers, and students. For the past few years we have been lucky enough to experience The White House tour. This year, I had to sprint around the grounds to take a quick picture of the White House Garden. It is the first garden on the grounds since the victory gardens of World War II & FDR.

I enjoyed seeing the garden and loved that my students got a chance to glimpse it, too. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to explain why someone who could afford to buy groceries from the store would choose to grow their own food. I love having a presidential family that understands conservation and leading by example.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day! Mr J has the best Mama imaginable. Thank You, Jenny.

A New Story that Generates Current and Hope

Most of the time when you read about books on Green Eggs, it will be Jenny reviewing them. This is mainly because Jenny is a voracious reader and I am dyslexic. I love to read, it just takes me a long time to finish a book.


That said, I just finished an inspiring read: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It is the memoir of William Kamkwamba, a young boy that grew up in rural Malawi who carried his family (and town) out of threat of starvation and poverty by building a windmill out of bicycle parts and junkyard debris. While reading physics textbooks in the local library, he learned about the basic prinicples of electricity, magnetism, and induction. Armed with this small bit of knowledge, a few diagrams, and his strong will, William is able to generate enough electricity to light his house, recharge cell phone batteries, and run a small water pump. The book reads quickly and is easily aproachable as William Kamkwamba and Brian Mealer tell a mesmerizing story of innovation and ingenuity.

My Easter Eggers

Amongst chicken enthusiasts, Easter Eggers (EE) refer to chickens that lay green or bluish green eggs. An EE is a cross-bred chick with one parent being an araucana, a pure-bred breed of chickens that lays green eggs, and another chicken.

My baby chickens are Easter eggers for another reason. They have been helping us eat all of our leftover Easter hard-boiled eggs. My father-in-law thinks that I am raising cannibals. The truth is egg whites are one of the first treats that chicks can handle eating. Embryonic chickens find their nutrients from egg whites so it makes since that young chicks would enjoy them and be able to digest them easily, too.

Finished Chicken Coop!

Here is the finished coop!

It took a few weekends, but I am finally done. It was my first attempt at chicken coop building, but I am pretty proud of it. There are two main parts to the structure: the coop and the run. The coop is the small green shed in the far end of the picture. That is where the chickens will be closed into at night and where the nesting boxes are. The run is the screened in area that allows the chickens to have fresh air and ground access. The run is necessary because we have several birds of prey and small mammalian predators in the neighborhood that would love a little chicken snack. A small ramp (not pictured) connects the coop to the run.

Here are a few of the cool features.

1) Mobility - It is designed to be movable by one person, and I have been able to move it around the yard. If a dolly is under the coop-end, the 1.75x6 board that runs the length of the structure can be used as a handle/lever to pick it up. I will try not to get all science teacher on you and lecture you about how it is a compound machine. Just believe me, it is and I wanna splain.

2) Roofing - The metal roof on the coop has a slight pitch that will divert water off the side of the coop. It will reduce the mud factor for chickens and egg-retrievers.

3) Egg Door - The rear wall of the coop has a small door that we will use for egg retrieval.

4) Overhang - The coop does not extend to the ground. This gives the chickens a more secluded, shady spot that will come in handy during the Texas Summers.

5) Recycled Materials - Jenny and I are trying to keep our global footprint as small as possible. This extends to the coop construction because many of the materials I used we reused from other projects. In fact, all of the framing for the coop and run were recycled display shelves from a Cost Plus World Market that was going out of business. They practically gave us the material.

Chicks at Three Weeks

Sorry for the delay in the pics. Here are chicken pictures from earlier in the week.

Here are the chicks on their first day out in the coop. We are taking them out for a little bit everyday.

Mr J loves chasing them around the coop and talking to them all about being a chick!

Biscuit and Huxley were very curious about the new additions to the yard.

Basura Bash

This morning, Mr J and I will be getting our Volunteerism on. More than likely, I will be chasing Mr J around while he is distracting all the other volunteers but it's all about intent. Right?

Basura Bash is an annual event where volunteers from across the city clean local waterways that all feed into the San Antonio River. Basura Bob (a talking fish with a walking/trash-collection stick) says, "Think Green and Keep it Clean."

NSTA Conference

Post have slowed down this week because I have been at NSTA (National Science Teacher's Association). That placed me far away from baby chicks and keeps Jenny way too busy with Mr J to post to the blog. I will be back home tomorrow. Who will have grown more: Mr J or the baby chicks?

There were a lot of interesting sessions at NSTA and I found out about several interesting environmental programs and grants out there for schools. One cool product I saw was from Fischer Science. It is a model green roof that can be built in class. I thought of about fifteen science projects to go along with it. I may buy it but it is a little pricey.

The City Chicken

Here is a great website about Chicken Tractors that we visited frequently while designing our chicken tractor. Our tractor doesn't look like any of these because we ended up using mainly recycled materials, but we used the photos to figure out what goes into a good chicken tractor design. Be sure to visit The City Chicken if you are thinking about urban chickens.

Update on the Chicken Tractor

I have spent the morning working on the chicken tractor. The wood is painted/stained, and most of the chicken wire is attached. All I have to do is finish the chicken wire, attach the latches, add a door to the chicken run, and attach a chicken ramp and roosting perches.

Sheesh. I thought I was almost done until I wrote this post. Sorry for the awkward pictures. It was hard to take a pic from a halfway decent angle and still hide all of Mr J's toys that are strewn about the yard.

Science Education

I teach. I teach because I love to see kids learning and exploring and figuring out. I teach because I love the excitement and passion that students can have. I teach middle school because squirrely kids are the best kinda kid. Last night, I attended the ARASE regional science fair where several of my students were competing. While in the stands, several things I already know were reinforced to me.

First, award ceremonies are painfully long. There is no reason to have an award ceremony that takes four hours. FOUR HOURS! There were more than a few bored squirrely kids by the end.

Second, science education is essential for developing thoughtful, reasoned citizen. Children are the future and what not, but I want a future that appreciates the world around them and understands how to investigate their world. I know that my students will not remember the relative bond strength of ionic and covalent bonds or all the ways polar bears have adapted to thrive in their environment, and most will never need to know this. The purpose of science is not random collections of facts or knowledge. It is not even fundamental laws or complex theories that explain and enlighten. It is the logical and systematic method of study. This is what I want my squirrely kids to get.

Finally, I was amazed to see all of the creative, environmentally projects that students are thinking about studying. I saw projects about construction of solar stills, vertical axis windmills, environmental impact and pollution removal, and energy density of various plant fibers. Lets here it for the squirrels.