The first session of the summer camp for children with special needs started today, June 16, at the Regional Landscape Park Feldman Ecopark. It was opened by the members of the Kharkiv City Centre of Social Rehabilitation of Disabled Children and Persons Disabled since Childhood “Promin.” They are the frequent visitors of the Ecopark. Starting from this February, when the decision about the long-term cooperation was made, they come here once a week. The programme of four-day’s session of the summer camp is rich and diverse, including the lessons of almost all directions of the Horse Complex and the Club of Young Naturalists.
“When children with special needs arrived here during the educational year to attend lessons, we had only an hour and a half or two hours. We worked in certain direction: either in the Theatre of Children and Animals, or in the stable, or in the petting zoo. Now, we are going to give them everything more intensively and in package,” Iryna Yavorska, the head of humanitarian projects of the Feldman Ecopark, tells. “The camp day lasts from 11 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. It includes excursions, horse riding, phaeton drive, sport games and art therapy lessons: painting, plasticine modeling, and handicraft. They will also attend the acting technique lessons, animals’ training, learning of songs, and animal-assisted therapy. They will have something new every day.”
In addition to the open-air rest, including full-fledged hot dinners, the health-improving programme stipulates equine-assisted therapy, first of all, for the children with cerebral spastic infantile paralysis, as well as the consultations given by the psychologists of the Center of Psychosocial Rehabilitation of the Feldman Ecopark.
It is important to note that during the lessons in the camp, the children with special needs will surely contact with the other children, not only educators. Together, they care horses and ponies, go on horse riding, take part in theatrical performances with animals. According to the specialists, it is very important for the process of these children’s socialization, for their preparation for the conditions of life in society.
“Our children are also engaged in landscape therapy and occupational therapy: they bed out flowers, water flowerbeds and learn to weed. Everything the common children do, but with special approach,” Iryna Yavorska emphasizes. “We are also planning to open the City of Masters with creative workshops soon: willow weaving, forest sculpture, floristics and the other applied kinds of ornamental crafts. Special educators will work with children there.”
The health-improving and rehabilitation camp for children with special need will work in the Feldman Ecopark till the end of summer. The children from the Special childcare institution No.2, the Kharkiv City Service Centre for Family and Youth “Dovira,” and the other institutions and organizations of Kharkiv oblast.
