Pets in the Classroom: A Good Idea?
Pets in the classroom can be a great learning experience for your students. Putting a guinea pig, a longtail lizard, or a couple goldfish in the room can help teach responsibility, organization and give kids access to a little slice of the animal kingdom they may not otherwise experience.
If you think your classroom might benefit from the lessons a pet can bring, here are a couple tips to ensure a smooth transition from pet-free to pet-full.
Classroom Pet Lesson Plans
First – you’re going to want to integrate the animal of your choosing into your lesson plan. The easiest way to do it? Have the kids choose the pet! Just create a list of appropriate animals to choose from – fish, guinea pigs and long-tail lizards are great choices (read: self-contained, inexpensive and relatively easy to care for).
Some other lesson ideas for a classroom pet are having students delegate tasks related to the care of the pet, voting on a name for your newfound friend or looking up some proper accommodations for the four-legged (or seven-finned in the case of the goldfish) classroom guest. Quill.com has some great aquarium supplies and accessories that will suit most of your needs.
What are the Best Classroom Pets for Your Class?
As mentioned above goldfish, long-tail lizards and guinea pigs all make great classroom pets. They’re low maintenance, inexpensive and pretty cute in addition to serving the purposes of your classroom – so let’s get down to brass tacks about what’s what.
Guinea pigs:
- They're great for children 8 and up. They're fragile little guys and younger children may not recognize their own strength when handling them.
- A lesson plan is built right in! Guinea pigs don't produce ANY Vitamin C so they need a vitamin C supplement.
- Guinea pigs are social animals, but may be initially wary of students. (They aren't fans of loud noises.)
Long-Tail Lizards
- These sleek little lizards should be for classes with students aged 10 & up. They need to be handled gently (their tails could break off!) and younger kids may be too rough with them.
- Lesson Plan Alert! They're insectivores which may seem gross to you, but will seem awesome to some of your students. When they're young, they need to be fed twice a day. As adults, they only need to be fed 3 to 4 times a week.
- They're tropical lizards so they require a nice hot rock for Jub Jub (provided your students are Simpsons fans). In other words, look into a heat lamp and a nice long terrarium (20 gallons or larger) for these guys.
Goldfish
- Goldfish can live in small to large fish tanks - though they're messy eaters so the smaller the tank, the more it will need to be cleaned. A 29-gallon tank is the preferred size for 2 goldfish.
- While they live in a variety of water temperatures, they prefer 65 to 75º F, so get a thermometer to make sure you're keeping your fish cozy.
- They'll eat just about anything, so common fish food should do the trick. Save pizza Fridays for the other wild animals in the classroom.
A classroom pet is a great way to teach your students about responsibility and can go a long way towards making your classroom a great learning environment.
Krista Wolfe is a marketing project manager for Quill.com where she writes to help small businesses, teachers and healthcare professionals make more informed decisions on office essentials. She also writes on our new community blog, Café Quill, about a wide range of business matters such as leadership, productivity and work-life balancing. Krista lives in Chicago and you can find her on Google+ or LinkedIN.