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Animal and Environment Friendly Lifestyles
This was a new event although some of the topics have been visited before. We had a good turn out and put the juniors through their paces as soon as they arrived! As you will see, we asked them to come up with animal friendly and environmentally friendly tips beginning with each letter of the alphabet. They had some fabulous ideas as you can see. It was interesting to see how much they knew already.
Then a small group who had not built bird boxes at our previous event were tasked with making up the remaining flat packs for sale while the rest of the team went into the wood to do a litter pick and to make some hides using some recently cut branches. Some repair work was done on one of the ponds which had been disturbed and the newly planted oak trees and foxgloves were also checked. The woods are beginning to look rather autumnal now but our junior members could see that just these few tasks made a lot of difference and will benefit the wildlife that use or pass through this special environment during the winter months.
Next on the agenda was a special fact-finding quiz to highlight just how much the consumer can help to avoid products that involve cruelty to animals. This was an eye-opener for some junior members and it involved searching for the answers using a range of leaflets and articles. There was some lively discussion sparked off from this activity! This was followed by an activity looking at the way most of the eggs in this country are produced. We have a life-sized model of a battery cage, complete with chickens. The models are so life-like that very often people do a double take and we certainly caught a few of our junior members out! Part of the exercise is to sort out a pile of egg boxes to see how easy it is to identify the conditions the hens laying the eggs were kept in. As a task, the junior members had to design an eggbox that a chicken would prefer to see on the supermarket shelves. We had some fabulous designs and it was Jade’s task to judge the best ones!
To round off the afternoon we had a discussion about helping animals to cope with fireworks and then went into competition time. This is where the junior members choose a topic they feel strongly about and create a poster to inform others of the issues. Poor Jade, a member of staff who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, had a hard time of judging the entries for this. Thankfully we had plenty of prizes to give away so she was able to be generous which she was relieved about! As we were all waiting for the competition winners to be decided, I had set the Claws members a task. (Claws are our oldest junior members) This involved them coming up with 2 pieces of drama highlighting the differences between farms that have higher welfare standards and those who don’t. Their drama pieces were particularly about the way animals on farms accredited through the RSPCA Freedom Food scheme are treated. The Claws team had worked independently and had put together 2 brilliant pieces of drama in a short space of time. And then it was time for us to finish!
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Caitlin: “This afternoon was brill!”
During the afternoon everyone had completed a questionnaire about the programme for 2008 as we are now getting ourselves ready to start to plan for the activities to offer in 2009! It would seem that the more practical events were definitely the most popular but there were requests for a feline day and for one on small and furries too!
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Ben: “I think we should make 2 more Buggingham Palaces next year!”
If you would like to join in with these Sunday afternoon events next year, you will need to join the Animal Action Club. This means you will need to send off your membership to the RSPCA at Horsham and we will then send you the new programme in February/March. We look forward to seeing some new faces in 2009 and hope that you will enjoy these special afternoons with us.
Ruth Lane
Junior Membership Coordinator for Leicestershire
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