Chick chick chick chick chicken, lay a little egg for me!

By Al Muna School

Posted on November 25th, 2014.

We have had a really exciting last 6 months at Al Muna Primary School, with the arrival of chicks and tortoises!

FS1 Geckoes class worked really hard to look after the chicks, making sure they had food, water and a heat lamp to keep them warm. Every morning, when they came into school all of the children checked to see how much they had grown, watching them develop their wings and get taller and taller! The children made sure the chicks were happy in the class by reading them stories and telling other children to be nice and quiet so they didn’t get frightened. Geckoes class voted for the names Toby Tall and Dalia.

Toby Tall and Dalia were really lucky because Mr Howsen bought them a fantastic new house so they could live outside with lots of space and have lots of fun. Toby Tall has even started to crow, however, he is still learning, so far he can only say ‘cock a doodle…’ Hopefully, he will keep practising over the summer holidays!

Chickens are much happier if there are 4, or 5 in a brood, so we decided to get two more little chicks. Everyone at Al Muna voted for their names using Padlet, an online resource, and the most popular names were Marshmallow and Lola. Marshmallow has a quiff like Justin Beiber and Lola is going to be a typical speckled hen when she grows up. Abu Dhabi is really hot and humid in the summer, with temperatures sometimes reaching 50 degrees Celsius, so the new little chicks are have to stay inside. Hopefully, after the holidays they can go and live with the big chicks, fingers crossed everyone gets along.

Three tortoises are also living with the chickens, they love to dig holes in the sand and they don.t seem to mind when the chickens try and eat their food! We have learnt that tortoises and turtles are different. A tortoise can walk on the land and doesn’t swim, while a turtle swims in the sea.

All of the children at Al Muna Primary School love saying ‘hello’ and ‘As-Salaam Alaykum’ to the chickens in the morning and on the way home, and seeing how much they grow and amazingly how high they can fly! The children have leant about looking after chickens and how to keep them happy by feeding them the right food and always making sure they have lots of clean water. All of the support staff at school are fantastic too, they always make sure the ground is a little bit damp to keep the chickens cool over the hot summer months as they love to lie in the cool sand.

The children are all going to be really surprised to see how big the chickens are after the summer!