Farmscape for May 28, 2009   (Episode 3193)

The Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan has launched a new teaching tool designed to educate children about farming and ranching in province.

The 'Tales from the FACS Farm' Activity Book is a 16 page interactive activity book that was developed by the Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan in collaboration with two Saskatchewan educators.

Farm Animal Council executive director Adele Buettner says the book is geared toward children from Kindergarten to grades three and four.

Clip-Adele Buettner-Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan
The content is all interactive educational activities, everything from crosswords and word searches to very original games that our educators created and it compliments the current curricula in Saskatchewan.

It's focused on complimenting the math, health and social studies and language arts in the classroom.

We target that age group because grades three and four are when those children traditionally take part in tours, whether they go to Canadian Western Agribition or to tours at Prairieland Park's Ag Adventures or other exhibitions and fairs around the province but that grade is traditionally the tour grades.

We touch on all of the main commodities and it's all of course relevant to animal care and daily chores.

It gives the user or gives the child an opportunity to get a sense of what's involved each day with caring for animals.

We've made it available because, over the course of our existence, we have focused on ensuring that we have educational resources available for teachers and to children so this was just one of our many projects that we have on the go and that are available to meet our objectives.

Buettner notes the activity book is being distributed throughout Saskatchewan and it's available on-line at the Farm Animal Council website and through a new website, farmanimalfun.ca, which is being developed for children.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council