by Vicki N
We are a family which has always had animals, namely dogs and cats. In the past few years, we have expanded that to include sheep, a pig and chickens.
Here are some easy ideas on how to learn from your animals. These ideas can all be expanded into larger topics or made smaller depending on the age and ability of your child.
- An obvious one is animal care. Ask your child to research the care needs of a particular animal, covering topics such as what they can eat, health risks and enrichment. This can tick the boxes for literacy and science (biology and physiology) depending on how in-depth you go. Make sure that you involve your child with carrying out what they’ve learnt, including things such as feeding the animals. Regularly cleaning out the animals is great exercise and a good example of physical education and fitness.
- Working out animal feed. Ask your child to look up how much feed the animals should have per day. You could expand this into a topic by asking them to investigate websites online and work out who sells feed for the best price. Ask them to work out the cost of feeding the animals for a month (numeracy) and to put together a table or PowerPoint showing their findings.
- Drawing and labelling your animals. This is a great one for art, ask your child to produce a drawing of their favourite animal. You can then ask them to reproduce it using a different art style, for example paint, or clay.
- In one of their drawings ask your child to label the different parts of the animal (Biology and anatomy). You could expand this into looking at animal health and reproduction. An older child may wish to label the animal in more detail.
- Ask your older child to investigate the process for a particular animal to go into the human food chain. Do make sure with this one that your child understands what they might see here; it can sometimes be best to provide set websites and learning materials that you have seen for yourself with this. This can provide some really interesting learning on the topics of biology, sociology, farming and politics.
- Link the above learning to health and nutrition by expanding it to look at what animal products you have in your cupboard and fridge. If you are vegetarian or vegan you may want to discuss animal by-products and some of the more subtle animal ingredients which are in foods. Your child could look at the chemical compositions and number codes for some of the by-products.
- If you have chickens, ask your child to design a motif for you to put on your egg boxes. Again, this is great for art and design. Expand this into maths by asking your child to collect and sell the eggs. Ask them to set a price and ask them to write about what they have considered in that price such as time and cost of egg boxes. Ask them to keep an account of how much profit they make.
- Hands-on building is an easy topic to cover with animals if you have the time. Building a box to sell your eggs from, making adaptations to a chicken coop, or reusing items to make animal shelters. If you are a farming family there is always fencing that needs putting up or fixing; ask your child to work out the distance between each post, how much wire you need, the cost and how long it will take (numeracy).
- Photography is an art form that’s often forgotten amongst all of the arts and crafts. Digital photography using your animals is a great way to use art and media. Take photos of your animals, up close and at a distance. Experiment with different ways of adjusting the photos online using different enhancements, you could also include AI to change the photos. This is a good way to cover art, I.T and graphic design skills.
- Ask your child to investigate predator prevention for your animals. This can include things such as specialist fencing or guardian dogs. Ask for written details of the best methods and then why they have made a particular final choice (literacy).
Caring for animals can be hard work, although it can be enormous fun, but what it always does is provide enormous amounts of education opportunity.
