Applying maths to the real world

There were so many times at school when I wondered when on earth I would use the maths that I was learning. However, our new chickens have been a good way to show my daughter that you can in fact use the maths you are learning for a practical purpose. We now have an egg book where each day the number of eggs collected are graphed (okay so I started the colour coding and straight lines thing....) and then at the end of the month multiplication is used followed by addition to work out exactly how many eggs our lovely Boris Brown hens have laid for us. Of course once she has moved onto division we will then be able to work out the average number of eggs laid each day, but for now addition and multiplication are all that are needed. So... according to her calculations the 5 chickens laid a total of 78 eggs in 20 days (which calculates to an average of 3.9 eggs a day and an average of 15.6 eggs per hen over the 20 days, which means each hen laid an average of .78 eggs each day or 1 egg every 1.3 days.... ). The theory that they lay on a 25 hour cycle seems to be holding true and hopefully as the weather gets warmer with spring (still a while off) the average number of eggs laid will increase a little more. But for now we are more than happy and still enjoying becoming slowly more self sufficient.