Animal-supported education +
nature education
Care, responsibility and affection make children proud, happy and empathetic.
Animals play a special role in children's lives. They exert a strong attraction on them. Toddlers watch birds, such as ducks or pigeons, attentively from the pram at an early age. Cuddly toys, as the name suggests, are often representations of animals, "woof woof" is often one of the first words along with "mummy" and "daddy". Even in adulthood, discovering and observing a ladybird or butterfly still triggers joy.
Pets can be a friend, a source of comfort, a conversation partner and – not to be underestimated – a partner in play.
"An animal can help a child to master
the tasks of growing up."
Levinson
It is no secret that living with animals every day, caring for them and learning from them is an important field of learning and experience for children. Trust, care, responsibility and affection make children proud, happy and empathetic. In order to awaken and promote these important qualities, space and time are needed in addition to selected animals and their intensive training – a high demand in our everyday life!
As a provider, we enable children to experience living together with animals. We achieve this through pets in the facilities, the Farm For Kids project launched in 2018, day care dogs or a team of several dogs.
Pets in the childcare centre
For a variety of reasons, many families are not able to keep animals, despite their wish to have one. This is where our facilities do valuable work and enable children to live together with animals. Keeping animals in the facilities focuses on promoting the emotional and social competence of the child, strengthening existing resources and improving desirable skills. The aim of the animal-assisted activities in everyday pedagogical life is to teach children respect and appreciation through playful interaction with animals, to learn about personal feelings, needs and interests, and to overcome their own prejudices and concerns. It is therefore important to offer children the opportunity to have experience with animals and to support them in this way in their development processes.
Farm For Kids
As a non-profit organisation, TfK launched the Farm For Kids adventure in 2018. TfK has leased over 10,000 square metres of land on a large organic farm in the Taunus region. The Farm For Kids is available to all institutions and is regularly visited by them with specially purchased buses. Children are given access to local animals such as chickens, goats, sheep, donkeys, rabbits and also to alpacas, which have now settled here. The adventure farm encourages children and professionals to act responsibly by caring for the animals, the barn and the farm grounds. With a team of several educators, the employees from our childcare institutions are assisted by professionals who know the farm well. They support with their expertise about the animals and regularly offer alternating nature and animal-assisted activities.
Dog team
Educational work with dogs is intended to support and encourage emotionally, cognitively and socially. Dogs are challenging, consistent but also patient teachers. They perceive the children's mood very quickly and reflect it in their own behaviour. They only react in a desired way to clear and unambiguous behaviour. Through dogs, children learn to sense their own wishes, to formulate them clearly, to set their own limits, but also to accept the limits of the animal. Their own and others' perceptions are trained and new behaviour patterns can be tried out. In the careful, sensitive, playful and professionally accompanied handling of a dog, a holistic nuturing is achieved. The Terminal for Kids enables its employees to bring their trained dog to the day care centre. If the dog is not trained, TfK offers the employees support and guidance in the training process, true to our motto #liveyourstrengths.
In addition, Terminal for Kids maintains a team of educational specialists with trained dogs. The dog team visits those TfK facilities that do not have a dog at regular intervals and offers different educational sessions depending on the facility, the size of the group and the age of the children.
Since educational events are based on bonding between the participants, the professionals and the dog, the childcare centres are always assigned to a specific professional. Through recurrent visits, the dog, the premises and the children become familiar with each other. This gives children the opportunity to build a relationship with the professional and the animal.
Nature education
By regularly spending time in the fresh air and in the field, the children develop a deep connection with nature and the environment. This enables them to experience the basic attitudes of wonder, "thanking and asking" in a natural way.
Experiencing the diversity in nature creates an interaction between feelings of security, trust and comfort on the one hand and appreciation of nature and life on the other. Out of this feeling, the children learn to take responsibility for themselves, their actions and the consequences of their actions.
The children in our facilities experience everyday immersion in nature through forest days and weeks or in forest groups.
We opened our forest daycare "WaldKitz" in Langen in November 2020.
Our "Bibabauernhofsong"
(Bible Farm Song)
Today we’re really happy,
we're going to the farm
we take the rabbits on our laps
and the chickens dance away ...
Bibabauernhof!
Additional costs
Animal-assisted education is a supplementary offer of TfK and is associated with additional costs. Learning to be responsible towards small animals in the respective childcare centres is free of charge.
"Daily interaction with animals and nature can promote social skills and language development, among other things. The connection with children is greater than we adults can imagine."
As a non-profit organisation, TfK invests a quarter of a million euros per year - without any public subsidies at all - in the Farm For Kids. If you would like to support our little "school of key skills", we can offer you three sponsorship packages. Find out more here.
Rui Miguel Machado Oliveira
Head of the department
Animal-based education +
nature education
- advice, support and training
- conceptual work
- support for the purchase of pets
- expert advisor according to the Hessian education and development program (Hessischer Bildungs- und Erziehungsplan)
T: 06105 99661-259 (Mi./Fr.)