Mini Tales

Tender Little Hearts has a unique niche in equine assisted learning and literacy development by transporting qualified miniature therapy horses and donkeys around the Valley to a variety of libraries, schools, child-advocacy centers, and anywhere else a child can benefit from their services.  Tender Little Heart’s innovative outreach is the only equine-based nonprofit in Arizona offering offsite literacy and reading programs. Their programs not only promote literacy and encourage reading, they offer comfort, joyfulness, empowerment, self-esteem and unconditional love while interacting with their miniature equines.

Arizona is facing a literacy crisis and it begins in early childhood. Today the literacy skills demanded by 21st century work and learning environments are increasingly more complex. We are unsuccessfully preparing our children to meet that demand. Well-established research underscores the vital importance of addressing this crisis. Children entering kindergarten without the skills they need to succeed in school rarely meet the critical milestone of reading proficiently by third grade, a strong predictor of future academic and vocational success. And there is a high correlation between vocabulary size at age three and language test scores at ages nine in areas of vocabulary, listening, syntax, phonological awareness and reading comprehension. By age four, children from low-income families hear an average of 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. Success in addressing this crisis will require ensuring that young children in Arizona have strong learning experiences from birth through grade three, rich in literacy and language acquisition at school, at home, and in the community. The key to Arizona’s future is a statewide, community-based literacy project. Educators, families, businesses, public agencies, philanthropy and communities all have a role to play. Only when early literacy becomes everyone’s responsibility will we have the kind of impact and change we need to see Arizona thrive.

The mission of our programs is to improve literacy, promote personal development, and encourage positive life choices. By providing these literacy promotion programs, we meet children where they are in their reading journey and encourage them to become a confident reader through the experience with the mini equines. The child builds confidence with an understanding listener, one who doesn’t criticize, one who encourages the child to continue to read with the outcome goal of improving their reading proficiency and achieving grade level fluency.

Since its founding in 2018, TLH has provided over 100,000 hours of volunteer service, providing 3-4 program visits each week, to enrich the lives of children, adults and seniors in Arizona. It is estimated the Mini Tales program currently reaches 3,500 -4000 children a year through various school, library, child advocacy center visits and special events.

Tender Little Hearts does not actively charge for its services. This allows the underserved, lower social economic areas and Title 1 schools to easily and readily be served by their organization and the activities they can offer.  The impact of their programs will carry over to their siblings and communities.  Their online Mini Tales video and recorded books have the potential to reach thousands more as they are available 24/7 and free of charge.

Tender Little Hearts works to build productive relationships and make a positive impact in the lives of others, by inspiring hope and transformation through interactions with their miniature equines. They aspire to create an environment where every horse is given a purpose to enrich a human life, bring joy and comfort, and leave every person with a reason to smile. They are 100% volunteer supported and 100% of all funding received are directed to their programs.

 Please email us to book a visit. ​Email:  [email protected]  

You can visit our Virtual Read To A Mini option for a 10 minute virtual reading experience featuring our Tender Little Hearts equine friends.  We are happy to arrange a ZOOM experience if your child would prefer a one-on-one session.  Just send us an email to set a time and date. 

We are honored to have been selected as the Arizona State Daughters of the American Revolution, AZDAR, as well as the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, NSDAR, SW Divisional and National winner of their Literacy Promotion Contest.  We support their mission of education and are pleased to support their Literacy Promotion efforts. 

We have A-Z Activity Books for ages 4-5 and 6-7!

Join the delightful miniature horses and donkeys of Tender Little Hearts Mini Tales:
Dolly, Mazy, Buddy, Boone and Josie.  

These little equines will assist with learning the alphabet through 53 equine-themed letter trace and color pages. 
Plus, enjoy 15 additional fun and educational bonus pages with mazes, connect-the-dots and more!   
​We now have 2 books available, one recommended for ages 4-5 and one recommended for ages 6-7

100% of all proceeds go back into our Literacy Promotion programing. 
Click here for our ACTIVITY BOOK PREVIEW for ages 4-5
Click here for our ACTIVITY BOOK PREVIEW for ages 6-7

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We are now a facilitator for Horse Powered Reading®
https://www.horsepoweredreading.com

Private sessions are available at our ranch. 
Activities can be shared at schools for a small group of children.

Founder, Terry Holmes-Stecyk, with Dolly.

Encouraging reading and promoting literacy ,
​one story at a time.