Ferret visit
Helen Murray
It was serendipitous for me today that I was needed to cover for Kristy as Barry's helper at Curiosity Hub on the day they also happening to be welcoming a visitor: Anna (Clarendon Street Vets) and her pet ferret. We welcomed her by asking what Stanley and she would need.
I have been fascinated by animals and their ways of communicating since childhood. I see similar fascination in people like Anna (it's not enough that she works at the vets, her house is also full of rescued animals!) and lots of home-educated children I meet...including many at Curiosity Hub, so I am thoroughly enjoying creating opportunities to explore that with them.
Stanley the ferret was of course the star of the show. Anna described him as a 'one-of-a-kind' ferret and the only one of her five ferrets allowed in her house because he is toilet trained and unusually, absolutely adores cuddles with humans. He lapped up the attention today, sniffing everyone with his inquisitive nose (ferret eyesight not so good, we learned) and then settling in for a relaxed snooze in various pairs of arms.
Anna invited questions from the group about costs for keeping and adopting ferrets, what they eat, what sort of habitat they need. She also answered questions that had been prepared for her in advance for ideas for careers with animals (vet, vet nurse, behaviourist, farrier came up in response to particular interests of the group) and common issues they treat at the vets (cat fights a biggie) and role of preventative veterinary medicine.
As with any visitors we have from time to time in the weekly sessions, we asked the group in advance if they'd like to take up the offer of the visit first. In the session, we invited everyone to meet the facilitator but also created space to make it comfortable for those who were less interested to do other things of their choosing. We received some lovely feedback today that as this particular visitor is also running a more in-depth session for Waymakers at a later date, it helped a child feel less nervous about participating in that. We hoped the Waymakers model would allow for things like that to happen and I was pleased to see in real time today, a short visit in a familiar space, making it easier to then engage in other settings. The hope is that over time, spaces like Curiosity Hub will build capacity for flexibly engaging with all sorts of amazing learning opportunities home education has to offer both in and away from the hub itself.
For some, today's visit sparked interest in meeting other animals and also other potential Deep Dive field trips e.g. to a rescue centre. I was also met in some of my other interests today (deliberately modelling exploring them in the space) with Curiosity Hub members kindly helping me figure out how to replace a broken electric guitar string - thank you to them!
