Written by the team at Dashing Ducks Castle Hill

Pet Safety for Preschoolers: Inside Our Castle Hill Pet Week

Ask a room of four-year-olds about their pets and you will not get a short answer. That is more or less how Pet Week began at our Castle Hill centre. Animals kept turning up in the children’s conversations and in their play, so our educators built a whole week around it, and some very well-behaved and much-loved pets came in to meet everyone.

Pet safety for preschoolers can sound like a dry topic. It is not, when there is a real dog sitting in front of you.

We did not plan this week in advance

Our curriculum is not locked in a term ahead. When a group of children keeps circling the same subject, our educators follow it, which is what the Early Years Learning Framework means by being responsive to children. Pet Week came straight out of what the children were already talking about.

That matters more than it might sound. A four-year-old who has spent a week on something they chose remembers it. The same child, handed a worksheet about animals on a Tuesday because it was scheduled back in March, mostly remembers that it was Tuesday.

The framework sets out five learning outcomes, and the week sat across three of them. A strong sense of identity, which is the confidence we watched build in the children who were wary on Monday. Being connected with and contributing to their world, which covers the respect for living things that ran through the whole week. And a strong sense of wellbeing, which is where the safety side belongs. None of that was announced to the children. As far as they were concerned, they were patting a dog.

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How to meet a dog you have never met

This is where pet safety for preschoolers stops being a list of rules. You can tell a four-year-old to be gentle. It means very little until there is an actual dog in front of them and an educator kneeling alongside, showing them how.

Across the week the children practised the things that genuinely prevent dog bites. How to approach an animal instead of running at it. How to pat a dog gently, and where. How to notice when an animal has had enough and would like to be left alone.

That last one is the hardest and the most useful. Young children read a dog moving away as an invitation to follow. Learning to read it as a sentence, and to respect it, is the skill that keeps them safe at a friend’s house years from now. Raising Children Network has clear guidance on this, including the warning signs most adults miss.

Caring for something that depends on you

The other half of the week was about responsibility. What animals need from the people who look after them. Food, water, exercise, patience, and somebody noticing when something is wrong.

Our educators keep describing the same change. Children who started the week wanting to touch everything ended it asking first. That shift from wanting to caring is empathy doing its work, and it does not stay with animals. A child who waits for a dog to be ready is practising something they will use on the mat with another child the following week.

If your child came home talking about dogs, there is a good moment there. The NSW Government runs a responsible pet ownership education program, and one part of it, Living Safely with Dogs, is written specifically for four and five year olds. Worth knowing about whether or not there is a dog at home, because most dog bites to young children involve a dog the family already knows.

Come and see what the children are into this week

Pet Week was a good week. Noisy, a bit hairy, and the kind of learning that sticks because the children chose it themselves.

If you would like to see how our educators build on what your child is curious about, our team is always happy to show families through our Castle Hill centre and talk about what a week here actually looks like. You can get in touch any time, or read what other local families have said on our testimonials page.

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