Written by Mary Miller, Farm Manager, and Alyssa Catholdi, Humane Education Supervisor at Lollypop Farm.
At Lollypop Farm, we see humane education as a vehicle promoting kindness, developing empathy, and cultivating compassion toward animals, people, and the natural world. We believe in kindness for all kinds, which is why we strive to introduce our campers to as many animal species as possible.
One of those species is a domestic chicken, or Gallus gallus domesticus. Try saying that five times fast – we make the kids! Turkey, a sweet, social Turken-Mix, has quickly become a beloved animal ambassador at Lollypop Farm’s Summer Camp. Mary, Turkey’s mom, APHE member, and Farm Manager at Lollypop Farm, starts each lesson by diving into the scientific name, domestication history, and anatomy of the domestic chicken. Campers follow along, take notes on a worksheet, and then take it home to teach their family members what they learned that day. After this, the group reads a social story about how to safely meet and pet Turkey.
Nick Kohner, another APHE member and Leadership Donor Relations at Lollypop Farm, wrote a blog post about social stories a couple of years ago. To quickly summarize:
Social stories are a social learning tool that can be used by parents, educators, or professionals, and each social story is developed for a specific audience… Social stories are patient descriptions of social situations that allow the audience to feel more prepared for a particular event or situation… The goal of a social story is to help the audience understand expectations, feel more comfortable, process thoughts and feelings ahead of time, and practice how to respond in certain scenarios.
We strongly recommend implementing social stories before every animal interaction. Social stories support individuals of all ages, not just neurodiverse children, by making implicit social norms explicit. In addition, there can be increased anxiety and apprehension when meeting animals, especially those with which the individual has had previous trauma or has never met before. Social stories also support our animals by clearly laying out expectations and minimizing the potential for stressful, unwanted interactions.
After Mary’s lesson, Turkey stays in the Education Classroom as an honorary camper for the day. Our campers love having Turkey in the classroom due to the endless opportunities to observe her just doing chicken things! Turkey chimes in during lessons, engages with her enrichment items, and even provides our campers with companionship during the day.
One of our favorite campers (don’t lie to yourself, we all have one) decided to use her break time after lunch to put on her ear defenders, pull out a book from her backpack, and practice her reading skills with Turkey. We also had a camper create a test all about chickens, based on what she learned that day.
An extension activity our campers enjoyed was completing a guided drawing from Art for Kids Hub titled “How to Draw a Chicken.” We took this guided drawing a step further by challenging campers to pick their favorite breed of chicken from this Chicken Breeds poster by Becky Dawson. We even had campers come up with their own chicken breeds! This activity can be done with other animals, such as cats, dogs, horses, pigs, you name it!
As Lollypop Farm expands with our Kindness for All Kind capital campaign, we are striving to embed farm animals into all of our humane education programs to show everyone, not just children, that farm animals are companions, too.
Cross-posted from the Association of Professional Humane Educators blog page.
