SPCA enters digital gaming to support Kiwi kids with caring for animals

At SPCA, we are regularly blown away by the creativity and smarts of Kiwi kids who engage with our Education Programme. In Christchurch, Year 6 students from Elmwood Normal School, Merivale, recently designed an SPCA Minecraft education resource that’s helping to teach other kids how to care for animals.

Using Minecraft, the students designed and built the foundations of four home environments: a kitchen, laundry, apartment with a terrace and an aquarium. After using SPCA’s education resources and learning what animals need to be happy and healthy, students across New Zealand will then build upon these environments turning them into enriched spaces that meet all the welfare and safety needs of animals.

‘Minecraft: Education Edition’ is used by millions of school students around the world to make learning fun, and is free to all state, state-integrated New Zealand schools and kura. Microsoft partner ImpactEd helped the Elmwood students build the resource, Care and Create, which aligns to and aids a number of existing SPCA teaching and learning resources.

Care and Create provides a fun interactive opportunity for young learners to build pet-friendly enriched environments helping to teach children what animals need to be properly cared for, and in the process, they develop the important life-skills of empathy, communication, creativity, problem solving and digital ability.

“Our Education Programme strives to nurture respect, kindness, compassion, and concern for people, animals and the environment. So, we are really excited about being able to provide students with future-focused education opportunities that not just support them academically, but socially and emotionally as well.” – Nicole Peddie, SPCA’s National Education Manager.

Schools across Aotearoa can now download Care and Create, and the accompanying teaching resources all for free from the SPCA Teachers’ Portal here