Chicken Yard

Play with chickens in the chicken yard. You never know what will happen next. Chickens walk around the chicken yard in various states of focus and excitement. Follow them around and see what they do!

Purpose: To teach young children fundamentals of systems thinking by exposing them to an observable, emergent environment whose parameters and behaviors are clearly communicated by the interface.

Usage: Tap the left and right arrows at the top of the screen to toggle between chickens and observe what each one is up to.

For teachers: Chicken Yard is designed to demonstrate the "Systems and System Models" Crosscutting Concept: "Systems in the natural and designed world have parts that work together." Use and reference the app in conjunction with the following Next Generation Science Standards: K-ESS2-2: Earth's Systems K-ESS3-1: Earth and Human Activity

Topic suggestions for classroom discussion:

• What do we mean when we refer to an object's "state"?
• How is a chicken's state reflected in its attributes?
• How a chicken's state is reflected in its behavior?
• What elements of the environment do the chickens interact with? (tiles, boundaries)
• How do the attributes of the environment affect the states of the chickens?