The benefits of children of all ages interacting positively with animals are becoming more and more apparent. Looking after animals teaches responsibility and empathy. Animals don’t judge people as humans do and therefore interacting with them really encourages a child to lose his/her inhibitions and be themselves.
Encouraging children to interact with the donkeys & ponies leads to a memorable lesson. The educational talk can be as in depth and focussed as required, to fit in with the syllabus and whatever the children are studying at the time. We can touch on RE, science, animal management, career opportunities and history.
We have provided donkeys & ponies for drawing sessions and also used them in an English lesson setting, encouraging children to create poetry and stories based around the donkeys & ponies.
We always make lessons fun and the questions that follow are normally enthusiastic.
Sometimes children haven’t seen a donkey or pony up-close before, particularly in city schools. We feel these wonderful animals have so much to offer and we love to be able to show children what they’re all about.
We run educational days or half days. During these visits the children are given a talk about the donkeys and ponies. This talk can be themed depending upon what the children are studying at the time (i.e. emphasis on religion, animal welfare, origins of the donkey, the donkey’s role in society etc.) and we finish it with a question and answer session.
The talk is made as interactive, interesting and humorous as possible. The children are shown the donkeys’ teeth and feet. We share interesting facts about them and what they need.
We talk about our rescue donkeys and the assisted-therapy work that they do.
Following the talk, the children are all able to ask their questions and then interact with the donkeys.
Interaction
Our donkeys and ponies are specifically selected to be reliable, patient and gentle around children. They are absolute saints and their gentleness has to be seen to be believed. The children will each be able to brush the donkeys or ponies, hold them whilst the others are grooming and then take them for a walk.
We can teach them how to pick out the hooves, how to make the donkeys or ponies walk and stop. It’s lovely to see the children’s amazement when they find they are in total control of the donkey or pony and it is doing exactly as they ask.
Outdoors or indoors
The excitement a donkey or pony educational day brings to the children never fails to amaze us. We often pull up in the trailer to screams and excitement from the playground reminiscent of the Beatles era!
We can run the visits in the playground or on a field. If we have prior warning, we can bring our specially trained assisted-therapy donkeys or ponies who can be based in the classroom in the event of bad weather. They always wear a nappy!