Humane Education

Welcome to the OHS Humane Education Program, a site for educational exchange and creativity for all ages. OHS promotes kindness, empathy, compassion, and protection of companion animals and wildlife through several educational paths:

Animal Tales: stories contributed by students and animal lovers.

Read with OHS: visual and auditory video narrations from thought-provoking children’s books viewable on our OHS YouTube Channel

OHS Humane Education Patches for any youth, scouts, or clubs and designed to encourage understanding of animal care and animal issues.

Community Service Projects for high school and younger interested students coordinated with our OHS Youth Volunteering Program.

Learn Outdoors with OHS: Elementary school classrooms can join OHS to participate in outdoor activities to connect to nature and care for their community through events like the Great Schoolyard Bird COUNT Day and Clean Up the Schoolyard for Earth Day.

Humane Education E-library with educational booklets on animals of all types for elementary students.

Humane Education Newsletter: monthly one page newsletter with focused information and activities for elementary students delivered by email September -April.

Kind News Magazine Sponsor for classrooms of K-6 students in Fremont, Newark and Union City of Kind News, a Red Rover publication.

COMMUNITY

Have an animal story to tell?

Animal Tales is your place to share your original stories! Articles are written by our community youth and adults about their activities, rescues, clubs, community activism, and pets.

PARENTS

Want stories with subtitles to read along with your child?

Visit, follow and read along with our Read with OHS program with visual and auditory video narrations from thought-provoking children’s books viewable on our OHS YouTube Channel.

COMMUNITY:

Interested in educational materials and lesson ideas?

Check out our OHS e-Library -the place to find all our publications and links to our other materials. Explore educational e-books, read along stories, humane education newsletters and community stories.

STUDENTS, SCOUTS, CLUBS

OHS Humane Education Patches!

Explore different ways to earn a PATCH, including creating or restoring a wildlife habitat, caring for a pet, using recognized global tracking software for wildlife as a citizen scientist, or advocating for an animal species or the environment. Learn more.

STUDENTS

Looking for Community Service Projects?

Earn service hours through our OHS Youth Volunteering Opportunities! Humane Education coordinates several opportunities with our OHS Youth & Family Program for youth to do at home and in school to learn about companion and wild animals, animal welfare, and environmental support for our community.

TEACHERS
Help Students Learn to Celebrate Nature with our Classroom Participation Certificates!

Join OHS as we celebrate important global learning events outdoors like the Great Schoolyard Bird Watching Day and Clean Up the Schoolyard for Earth Day. Classrooms receive a certificate of participation and the student’s drawings, worksheets, and comments are posted on our website!

MORE DETAILS

K-6 TEACHERS
Apply to receive a free classroom subscription!

OHS reaches over 3,000 students each year by sponsoring classroom subscriptions to a Kind News magazine, a publication of RedRover, for your students. Teacher’s guide included.

CLASSROOM SUBSCRIPTIONS ONLY.

APPLY

Earn an OHS Humane Education certificate for your elementary school classroom!

Explore our different activities.

A HABITAT IN EVERY SCHOOL: CLASSROOM PARTICIPATION CERTIFICATE

OHS is All for the Animals…and their habitats, too! We live in a community estimated to regularly host over 500 species of fish, birds, invertebrates, mammals and amphibians. In addition, thousands of birds, butterflies, and marine animals pass through the area during migration. To support their migration and our local ecosystems, OHS is encouraging animal lovers to establish elementary school gardens to provide more native plant growth for our environment, water and nutrients for traveling birds, and flowering plants for our pollinating insects and animals.

In recognition of your efforts to help conserve our local environment, OHS is offering families an opportunity to share with us your habitat at school and chance to earn an award suitable for printing. When completed, you will have a location to help the animals and plants survive and multiply. Our goal is a habitat in every elementary school!

Ready to start? It’s easy!

Create or examine your current habitat. You must have at least two of the required parts to become certified. Please see A Habitat in Every School Award Instructions booklet to get started.
When your habitat is ready to share, fill out this form to describe what you have done.
Finally, draw your new habitat and/or submit photos or pictures of it, showing off the plants, feeders and water or shelter. You can be in your photo too! Send photos to humane_education@ohlonehumanesociety.org

What happens next?

OHS Humane Education will review your submission and make sure the application and photos or drawings are together.
When reviewed, you will be sent your certificate.
You will have the satisfaction of knowing OHS and others are aware you are helping our local animals and plants and preserving your community’s ecosystem. All for the Animals!

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN HUMANE EDUCATION? CONTACT US!

THE GREAT SCHOOLYARD BIRD COUNT: CLASSROOM PARTICIPATION CERTIFICATE

OHS enjoys bringing awareness to the international Great Backyard Bird Count held in February each year to support the week the world comes together for the love of birds. To make the count more meaningful for our students, we invite our local teachers and students to participate in The Great Schoolyard Bird Count. OHS asks teachers to encourage their students to count birds for 5-15 minutes, report their numbers, and then send in their counts and pictures the students drew of a bird they saw and might be able to identify.

Classrooms are sent an award of participation for excellence in bird counting & drawing. Hope to see you in February!

The Great Schoolyard Bird Count

1. Take students outside to the schoolyard. Ask them to count birds they see for 5-15 minutes as appropriate for your grade level. If appropriate, students can predict how many and what types of birds they might see during the observation period.

2. Return to the classroom and have the students report their numbers to you.

3. Ask students to draw a picture of a bird they saw and might be able to identify, eg, Sea Gull, Robin, Crow, Sparrow, Hummingbird, unknown)

4. Send photos of drawings and results to us at humane_education@ohlonehumanesociety.org. You will be sent your certificate of participation and have a chance to be featured on our website!

CHECK OUT OUR YOUTH VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES!

OHS GREAT SCHOOLYARD CLEAN UP FOR EARTH DAY! CLASSROOM PARTICIPATION CERTIFICATE

Join OHS to celebrate EARTH DAY each year when the world comes together to clean up the planet.

Teachers ask their students to either pick up or identify objects of trash around the schoolyard or school grounds for 5-15 minutes, sort & count the items into trash, recycle, or yard waste and report numbers, and then draw a picture of them cleaning up and putting trash into a bin.

1. Take students outside to the schoolyard. Ask them to pick up trash for 5-15 minutes as appropriate for your grade level.

2. Return to the classroom and have the students report their numbers and type of trash to you.

3. Ask students to draw a picture of the trash, how many of an item, and how to sort the trash into landfill, recyclable, or garden compost.

4. Send photos of drawings or worksheets and results to us at humane_education@ohlonehumanesociety.org. You will receive a certificate of participation and have a chance to be featured on our website!

Happy Earth Day!

OHS HUMANE EDUCATION PATCH PROGRAM – FOR INDIVIDUALS, CLUBS, AND SCOUT TROOPS

Earn All Four OHS Humane Education Patches!

Explore different ways to earn a patch, including caring for a pet, creating or restoring a wildlife habitat, sighting and researching community wildlife, and by promoting animal welfare awareness through citizen science or by advocating for an animal species or the environment by exploring issues in need of social support.
Awards are open to all, but the OHS Pets Patch is targeted for ages 6-12 , OHS Wildlife Patch for ages 9-13, OHS Habitat Patch for ages 11-15, and OHS Animal Welfare Patch for ages 14-17. If seeking youth service hours for these activities, please see additional requirements for these awards on the Youth Opportunities page.

PETS PATCH

Caring for a Pet. Ages 6-12 Complete and submit an OHS workbook about caring for yours or a friend’s pet of any kind.

WILDLIFE PATCH

Community Science Wildlife Sighting. Ages 9-13 Be a community scientist by taking a walk with parental supervision to look for wild animals: can be anything like birds, squirrels, lizards, frogs, bugs, or others. Complete the OHS Wildlife Patch Workbook.

HABITATS PATCH

Create or Restore a Home or Community Habitat. Ages 11-15 Follow an instruction booklet to create a new habitat for plants to attract animals migrating or living in your area. Complete the OHS Habitat Patch Workbook.

ANIMAL WELFARE PATCH

Citizen Science Observations or Animal Advocacy: Ages 14-17 Two options are available to students o earn this Animal Welfare Patch.
Citizen Science Observations: Explore an online citizen science tracking project with parent permission from the following citizen science tracking projects and complete a workbook.
Journey North to which you can contribute observations on animal migration and send us screenshots of your contributions
Project Feeder Watch
Budburst specifically Plant-Animal Interactions or Phenology-Climate projects.
Animal Advocacy:Research animal rights and conservation issues and select one endangered animal or animals in need of protection, such as farm animals, marine animals, insects, or animal companions. Complete an Animal Welfare Patch workbook and determine a plan to help this animal in your community or globally.

WORKBOOK REQUEST FORM