Timboon P12 School in Victoria is a great example of how easy and fun it is to incorporate learning about agriculture into the classroom. Check out these ripper snaps of the year 5 and 6 kids who have been investigating chicken breeds, behaviour, wings, feathers, eggs, digesting and heaps of other egg-citing aspects of our chook mates!

Through their investigations, they’ve been able to learn about science — and they’ve also been learning about maths and probability through Chook Bingo! The kids visited the Planned Activity Group members of the Timboon and District Healthcare Service where they spoke about their chicken science studies, introduced their chickens and then after lots of chook cuddles and chicken conversations, the students distributed raffle tickets and challenged the PAG members to participate in a game of probability with Chook Bingo. And before you ask, no, a chicken wasn’t the prize, but Barbara and Bill were fortunate enough to score a bucket of chicken poop for their gardens when chickens left their calling cards on their squares on the Bingo grid. What a cracker!

Bill mentioned that he used to sell chook poo for 2/6p (2 shillings 6 pence) which students worked out would be the equivalent of 45c a bag and be worth $3-$4 today. Students back at the school discussed their chances of holding a winning raffle ticket as determined by a random poop offering from their poultry on the 54 square bingo grid. They learnt about the various ways of describing probability; as a fraction – 2/54, as a 1.5% chance or through the use of words such as impossible, unlikely, fair, even, likely, almost certain, certain. Manure maths… who knew!

Thanks to my mate Andrea for passing on these details. Make sure you follow Timboon on Facebook or subscribe to their blog for some other great classroom ideas.