SPCA Education Programme
SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is a charitable organisation that helps to protect over 34,000 animals in New Zealand each year. SPCA’s purpose is to advance animal welfare and prevent animal cruelty, and one approach the SPCA is taking to achieve this is by helping to educate the younger generations.
SPCA’s Education Programme
SPCA’s Education Programme is a free online animal welfare education programme that aims to improve animal lives by nurturing the young hearts and minds of Aotearoa New Zealand. Animal welfare education is about fostering respect, understanding, compassion and responsibility towards all living creatures.
The topics of animal welfare, responsible animal guardianship (ownership), kind conservation and volunteering, are ones that appeal to many children. Engagement with and exploration of these topics offer so many opportunities to nurture children’s social and emotional development, as well as real-life contexts for young learners to develop knowledge and an array of skills in almost every subject area - from technology and maths to art and drama.
SPCA Education Resources and Home Learning
SPCA’s Education Programme consists of four key components - each component was created for a different learning context. There are many ways to incorporate SPCA resources into your home learning programme.
Kids’ Portal: An open access site that hosts all of our animal care and welfare information for young learners. They can read about animal care and responsible animal guardianship, watch educational videos, complete one or more of our Learning at Home Booklets, get involved with our things-to-make-and-do, attend our education webinars, read our Kind Matters Newsletter and enter our latest competition. There is even a space for children to share their work and send our SPCA Expert any questions they have about the work we do. Our Kids' Portal content is delivered in a range of formats, which we hope will engage learners of all ages and learning styles.
Early Learning Portal: An open access site, these learning resources support learning across all strands of Te Whāriki and support teachers in nurturing their learners' exploration and curiosity about animals, knowledge of animal care, whilst encouraging feelings of empathy and act of compassion. The early learning kete are full of inspiring and meaningful suggested learning experiences, provocations and printable teaching and learning resources.
Instructional Readers: Our 24 instructional readers are levelled in alignment with the Ministry of Education's colour wheel so they can be integrated seamlessly into guided reading collections and classroom literacy programmes. The objective of each of the 24 original stories is to teach core animal care and wellbeing lessons through engaging, emotive and thought provoking stories. Whilst also increasing children's reading mileage and supporting the development of their reading skills and strategies. Our instructional readers can be borrowed from most public libraries, and are available for purchase here.
Schools Portal: SPCA also has resources specifically for classroom use. The Schools Portal has areas restricted by an automated registration system set up to only authorize applications with school.nz email addresses. All of our teaching resources hosted on our Schools Portal (apart from the content that is accessible without a login), have been created by classroom teachers specifically for classroom teachers to use in classroom contexts. They are not available to home educators online, however if there is a specific resource on our Schools Portal you believe is relevant to your learner(s), we welcome you to email us and we will send you the unit file direct. Email education@spca.nz
How your learners can help animals in need:
To volunteer at an SPCA Centre you must be 16+ years old (due to health and safety legal requirements), and be able to make it an on-going regular commitment. Learn more about volunteering at an SPCA Centre here.
There are many other ways learners can be involved with SPCA and volunteer their time to help animals in need, such as:
Make enrichment toys: Animals need enrichment to keep them mentally and physically fit. Your learners can make enrichment toys and donate them to SPCA, helping to provide the animals with entertainment and exercise throughout the day. There are plenty to choose from, find the instructions here.
Donate goods: Your learners can raise awareness and collect much needed items like towels, blankets, toys, etc. to donate to the animals while they wait for their forever homes. You can find full list of the items needed here.
Fundraise: They could hold a fundraiser such as a bake sale, and/or participate in one of our annual events. More information can be found here and here.
Foster: Your family may be interested in taking a look at becoming a foster family. Fostering is when volunteers give animals a temporary home and provide them with additional care, treatment and socialisation before they are ready to go to their forever home. SPCA supplies everything you need and it’s such a rewarding experience - you can find more information here.
We would love to hear from you:
We are continually looking to develop and improve upon our education programme. We would love to hear from you as to how we could specifically support home educators and their learners. If you would like to offer constructive feedback, suggestions of resources or materials that would be of value to the home education community, or share stories of how your learner(s) have enjoyed using our resources then please email us at education@spca.nz
Keep up-to-date with all things SPCA Education and join our private SPCA NZ Education Community Facebook group. You will be among the first to hear of any new SPCA resources, kids’ competitions, webinar schedules or online workshops.
