Animals Make Great Teachers.

Young children learn literacy, math, science, and social skills through interaction with class pets while developing an attachment to nature.

Literacy Skills

Combine children's natural fascinations with animals and their beginning reading and writing skills and you have a recipe for success. Children love to hear stories about animals, look at pictorial science books and "write" or draw their own stories about their new friend.

Science Skills

Children are using science skills as they observe animals and notice how and when it moves, what it eats, where it sleeps. A class might draw pictures to record their observations . . . just like real scientists!

Math Skills

Children learn to sort, classify, and even graph by animal’s size, color or shape. These math skills are a foundation to your child's understanding of numbers.

Social Skills

Perhaps most of all, animals teach children about caring and responsibility. Taking care of something other than themselves builds important character skills. The process of seeing to the needs of something less capable helps your child understand the importance of being responsible and empathetic. Children learn that pets deserve respectful treatment, just as they do. They realize all living things have needs and feelings to be considered. Animals, like humans, get hungry, thirsty, and tired. Sometimes they feel like playing, sometimes they don’t. Having pets puts them in the position of caregiver teaching them empathy, compassion and loyalty. They learn to anticipate, recognize, and respond to their pet’s needs, such as when pets need to be walked, fed, groomed, or shown affection. And it helps them develop a conscience. Caring children learn to remember to bring a pet in from outside during bad weather. They learn that a pet counts on them to keep the food and water bowl filled. As children meet a pet’s emotional and physical needs, children themselves grow in confidence, independence, and competence.

Attachment to Nature

Pets give children insight into the ways of wild as well as domesticated animals. They learn to admire the intelligence and effort it takes for any animal to survive. Pets open children’s curiosity about an endless variety of creatures and their required habitats. That builds a sense of wonder and appreciation for all expressions of life on Earth. And that’s a trait that will benefit us all.

About Roger Our Facility Dog

Roger is a Great Pyrenees who was born in December of 2011. He came to one of our centers to train as a facility dog at 10 weeks of age. Roger is an amazing addition to our staff and has many duties that he preforms each day. When choosing an animal to work with our team decided we wanted a hearty dog with a friendly face and a winning attitude. Roger was chosen from his pack because he seemed to be the pup that was most curious about the children on his farm. Out of a litter of 10 he was calm and loved to be tended to by the children. His mother and father are true livestock guardians for Windy Hills Family Farm and much discussion went on to ensure the animal we chose would be our special "guardian" for the children. He has proven to be everything we could have asked for.

When a child has separation anxiety we can take Roger in to their class room and allow him to help ease the stress of mom or dad leaving. It has been shown that dogs can aid in lowering blood pressure and bring peace to those who are stressed and Roger does just that. The children adore his visits and look forward to him coming to "play." When Roger goes into a class room many things are happening at once. The children are seeing that an animal should be treated with respect and that he is not there as a toy but a friend. He is there to listen when they are sad or to watch them put on a play. We have some children who are very shy about speaking in front of others for one reason or another. Roger can sit with those children and let them recite the alphabet or read a story to him with out the fear of being judged. This is a precious thing to witness and adds to the value of having a special furry friend around.

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Our Pre-School class gets to help first hand with Rogers training. This is an important aspect of his job and gives the children a sense of pride and partnership with him. Gimme Grace Dog Training has a trainer on staff that comes to us each week to further Rogers progress as a facility animal. He is learning many things in the class room through this program and the kids love being professional dog trainers. They are learning compassion and patience right along side Roger.

Roger is an ambassador for his kind and has helped to educate so many people about pet safety, proper handling of animals, what to do when a strange animal approaches you, and how to have a heart for those that depend on us. He is an asset in Early Childhood Development and he is our best friend!