Teachers in elementary schools, especially new teachers, don’t have tons of time to spare each day and if they do desire a classroom pet, they’ll need one that’s relatively low maintenance. Young children really love having a class pet. They enjoy naming the pet, feeding and caring for it each day and learn a great deal about responsible pet ownership. If you are new to the teaching profession or have just been considering the addition of a pet to your classroom, I would like to suggest a hamster.
Availability and Life Expectancy
Hamsters are small, quiet, clean and easy to tame. Since they are fairly common, virtually all pet stores sell them and they are very inexpensive to purchase, usually around 10 dollars. You can find hamsters in brown, yellow, black or white and they can be short or long haired. Their average life expectancy is only about 2 years, so as a teacher, you’ll need to be prepared to explain this to your students.
Springboard for Learning
Hamsters are very interesting creatures to watch and young children enjoy observing their comings and goings throughout the day. Sometimes they’ll sit very still, ears pricked up listening to the sounds of the classroom. Other times you might see them stuffing food into little pouches in their cheeks. Children love watching how they will sweep their paw across their cheek and empty the secret little pouches of food. This behavior can be a springboard for all kinds of classroom discussions on how animals in the wild prepare for winter by storing up food. You can discuss other animals such as squirrels and chipmunks who have similar behaviors.Another interesting fact about hamsters that can be shared with your students is that they are mostly nocturnal. They do most of their exercise at night and in fact become something of little circus performers when it gets dark. They can use the bars of their cage like a ladder, climbing to the top and swinging like acrobats. They can spend hours on their wheel and run miles through the tunnels in their cage. They really enjoy having paper towel or toilet paper tubes put in their cages and children enjoy bringing in those items from home for their class pet. When kids notice how quiet a hamster is in the morning as opposed to the afternoon, a teacher can discuss nocturnal animals and their behaviors.
Care and Maintenance
Caring for a hamsters is very easy and something a teacher can train her students to do relatively early on in the year. They simply need fresh grain pellets and water each day and new bedding for their cage once a week. The food pellets can be purchased at any Walmart or grocery store and the bedding should be made of cedar wood chips. They do enjoy gnawing on carrots and nuts but never give them onions of any type as they are toxic to hamsters. Students in the classroom can rotate each day as to who does the feeding and watering so that every child gets to have his or her crack at learning about responsibility.
In my experience as a classroom teacher, a hamster is an excellent addition to any setting with young children.
