SPCA's Education Programme

SPCA’s Education Programme consists of three interlinked components that encourage teachers, children, parents and the community to think, learn and act together to achieve positive, empathetic and compassionate outcomes for human and non-human members of society.

The first component is SPCA’s Teachers’ Portal: www.spca.nz/teachers

Free online resources designed for early childhood educators and classroom teachers of Years 1-9 that provide real-life, meaningful contexts for teaching and learning.   

• SPCA’s Resources for Schools - for classroom teachers and consist of animal welfare unit and lesson plans, printable and digital supporting materials and assessment templates covering an array of New Zealand Curriculum achievement objectives. 
• SPCA's Resources for Early Learning - for early childhood teachers looking for inspiring provocations, suggested learning experiences and engaging printable resources to support and guide meaningful learning experiences, underpinned by the vision and concepts of Te Whāriki.

The second component is SPCA’s Kids’ Portal: www.spca.nz/kids 

A fun, interactive and engaging website for children to learn about animals and animal care. On the Kids’ Portal, children can: 

• Learn all about SPCA and what we do. 
• Engage with animal care information and videos.  
• Enjoy puzzles, origami, colouring in and more. 
• Read SPCA’s Kind Matters Newsletter and enter competitions. 
• Find instructions to make enrichment toys for animals.
• Test themselves with quizzes, share their work and submit their animal care and welfare questions using the ‘Ask an Expert’ function. 
• Complete the Learning at Home Booklets and be awarded digital badges. 

The third component is SPCA’s Instructional Readers or Learn-to-Read Storybooks: www.spca.nz/storybooks 

Each original story teaches core animal care and wellbeing lessons through engaging, emotive and thought-provoking stories, whilst increasing children’s reading mileage and supporting the development of their reading skills and strategies.

• Every primary and intermediate school in NZ has been gifted six copies of each of the 24 title thanks to grant funding.
• Each story is based on a real-life SPCA animal rescue and contains messages about animal welfare, kind conservation and tips on how to be responsible animal guardians.
• Free teaching notes and reader response activities are available for each title on SPCA’s Teachers’ Portal - Resources for Schools at www.spca.nz/schools
• Available in five different languages and levelled in alignment with the Ministry of Education’s colour wheel so can be can be seamlessly integrated into school reader collections and classroom literacy programmes.
• This resource aims to bring school, home and the SPCA together.
• Additional copies can be purchased for school or home from www.spca.nz/storybooks

Additional supporting resource - SPCA’s Targeted Interventions Portal: www.spcatargetedinterventions.nz

Some children are more at risk than others in engaging in intentional animal abuse. These young people may require more intensive, targeted interventions, in addition to the education they receive from the components above. SPCA developed practice resources to support professionals working with children and young people in need of experiences that build empathy, compassion and prosocial behaviours towards. 

Children learn a lot through watching, listening, thinking and copying what their parents and guardians do. So naturally, if a child is consistently exposed to responsible animal guardianship (pet ownership) practice and empathetic treatment of living things, it is highly likely that child will begin to practice those same behaviours. These behaviours are likely to become instinctive and that child’s “norm”.

Unfortunately the same can be said when a child is regularly exposed to irresponsible and undesirable animal interactions.

The way that animals are treated by a family can strongly influence whether or not the children within the home learn to treat living beings with dignity and respect. For example, if a family’s dog is left chained in the backyard all day, every day with no shelter or exercise, or a rabbit is kept alone in a small cage in the backyard, a child exposed to this practice may learn to believe that it is ok to disregard the needs of others, rather than have consideration for them.

Tip for Parents/Guardians:

• When children see parents or an adult making an effort to care for those who cannot care for themselves, they learn that this is how to behave. Model responsible animal guardianship (pet ownership) for your children, so that they will learn that animals are sentient beings with their own thoughts, feelings, wants and needs.
• Show your children that animals are not toys or objects for them to use and then disregard when the novelty has worn off. Modelling this type of empathy and compassion will give your children the ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of others and act accordingly.

From a very young age, most children are surrounded by animals in some shape or form. Many children have animal themed clothing, bedding, toys and stuffed animals. We often see young children cuddling, naming, talking to, and playing with their animal toys. Walking into most early childhood centres, you will witness children learning their alphabet and practising their counting with animal pictures and library corner shelves filled with animal themed picture books.

Throughout primary and intermediate school, outings with friends, family or class groups will often include visiting animals at the zoo, birds in a park, and fish in an aquarium or fishpond. Children will watch animals on television and starring in blockbuster movies. It is therefore not surprising that from an early age, children have a fascination with all kinds of furry friends. With a fascination of animals, children usually want to interact with them, eager to hug and squeeze them.

Though this is often a child’s way of expressing affection, unfortunately this kind of attention is often less than empathetic since the needs of the animals are being disregarded. Most animals do not enjoy being chased, grabbed or pulled by young children who want to cuddle with them. It might seem harmless for small children to poke and prod animals, since they really cannot do them any major physical harm, but remember numerous studies have shown that the way people treat animals is closely related to the way they treat people.

Tip for Parents/Guardians:

• Discourage your children from chasing, grabbing, pulling or poking animals. A child who holds onto a struggling animal is not learning to consider and respect the needs of other living beings. Instead, encourage pro-social behaviours such as sharing, compromise and cooperation.