Blyth Wildlife Rescue are invited into Whitley Bay first school to give children invaluable wildlife lessons

Starting in the new year, Blyth Wildlife Rescue will be offering a range of sessions to North East schools to educate children on their local wildlife and how to care for them.

The reception class at Southridge First School were the first to get a visit from the charity, allowing the children to learn all about hibernation in an interactive session before the team return in the spring to teach about new life.

Sara works as a medic for the rescue and was invited to the school alongside her colleague to give the talk.

She said: “This is the first talk we’ve done at a school but it is something we are wanting to roll out in the new year, primarily to emphasise what is is that we do as a rescue.

“It will also help raise important funds for us and let children know how they can help their environments and wildlife in their communities and their homes.

“Hibernation was a topic they had already been covering this term so this was already something they had listened about, and they had a space in the classroom where they had set up toy animals who do actually hibernate.”

Expanding on how they made the sessions engaging for young children, Sara said: “We told them some stories about hibernation and we did an interactive colouring session and we had a little medical corner where we could pretend we had an animal and were looking after it”

“There’s hundreds of species of animals in our local area, a lot of them are overlooked – a lot of them need help and are in decline so we really just like to highlight that.

“We’re hoping to broaden the spectrum and cover a lot more topics in the future.”

Blyth Wildlife Rescue is a dedicated wildlife rescue and rehabilitation charity based in Northumberland – schools who are interested in having the team come and visit to deliver a talk should email: [email protected].

The charity also accept much needed donations through a GoFundMe page, or a wish list attached to their Facebook.