Which animal makes a good classroom pet?

Yesterday, the Kohavim children discovered a spider creeping around. We captured the spider in a glass habitat and observed the spider carefully. We began to discuss the idea of keeping the spider as a classroom pet. After some research, the children found out we were not prepared to take care of the spider and decided to release it. Today, the children continued their discussion of which animal might make a good classroom pet. Below is their conversation:

Eliza: A bunny because it eats carrots.
Molly: How about a bird?
Hannah: No because it makes noise. It will interrupt when we are having morning meeting.
Zack: Maybe you should get a parrot or a snake.
Hannah: A cat
Molly: But are you allergic to cats?
Hannah: Yea
Jesse; If you are allergic would that be a good pet?
Molly: Then you can’t come to school.
Hannah: I used to not be allergic to cats but my first time I met a cat I was allergic to them.
Jesse: What about an elephant?
Jacob: No! Because it would make noise at morning meeting. Maybe a giraffe.
Molly: No that would get too big and break the ceiling.
Hannah: What about if we get a baby giraffe?
Molly: No because it will get big.
Hannah: But when it grows up we can get rid of it.
Molly: But then we wont be able to get it out the door.
Jacob: Maybe it can go upstairs in the Haifa class.
Hannah: What about a chicken?
Molly; A chicken would be running around.
Jesse: What about a horse?
Jacob: No because it makes noise.
Hannah: What about a worm?
Molly: But it will get dried out in the hot sun and stuff.
Hannah: But we could get dirt and leaves.
Lily: A bunny is good because we have carrots
Hannah: It doesn’t make noise.
Lily: And it’s really soft and we can get a cage for it.
Zack: I want to get a parrot cause I just want to.
Dylan: It (parrot) repeats your words.
Zack: And if you get into a fight, maybe the parrot will say the same thing and you might win.
Dylan: But the parrot would fly over all the places.
Ryan: Or we could put it in a cage.
Ryan: A puppy. A pug.
Dylan: We can name him Tucker.
Dylan: How about a kangaroo?
Zack: I think it would be too hoppy.
Dylan: How about a crocodile? We can make him calm.
Zack: Once I touched a baby crocodile.
Dylan: How about a cat?
Zack: Molly and Jesse are allergic to cats.
Ryan: Oh I know!
Noah: A dog.
Jesse: How about a penguin?
Zack: I don’t know what it eats. Maybe fish.
Eli: Because he likes to be cold.
Dylan: How about we get a cheetah?
Zack: It would be so fast. If we would play tag we would never be able to get him!
Zack: I love parrots cause then it would go on my shoulder.
Dylan: But we don’t have a cage. We could buy one.
Zack: One of my friends has a parakeet, maybe a parakeet.
Dylan: How about a pet fish? Because it doesn’t do anything. We could feed him stuff.
Ryan: We don’t have fish food.
Max Greenstein: We can prepare a house for it, so it feels like its at home.
Ryan: If we got a penguin we would have to be cold.
Max Greenstein: How about a dog? Dogs are easy.
Jesse: Well I am wondering about when the dog has to go to the bathroom.
Zack: I have a dog. They go to the bathroom on the grass.
Jesse: What if it is morning meeting and the dog has to go to the bathroom?
Ryan: Maybe there would be people on the playground.
Max Greenstein: I’m gonna draw a hamster.
Dylan: Yeah, because the hamster likes the rolly thing.
Max Greenstein: But we don’t have food for the hamster.
Dylan: We could buy it.
Jesse: What about a turtle?
Ryan: I want to have a turtle as a pet here.
Zack: He would be so slow.
Ryan: Because I like them and they would be a good pet.
Eli: I made a worm and a penguin.
Sabrina: I made a mouse.
Ryan: But he might be a little too quiet. His whiskers might be a little too ticklish.
Zack: If you play hide and seek, he would be so quite we can’t even find him.
Dylan: He might be too small.

The Kohavim children had many ideas about which animal might make a good classroom pet. They also thought a lot about how you take care of the different animals and the qualities that make an animal a good pet. They even designed an experiment to discover if a penguin might actually be a good pet. For more information, see our blog post about our "Penguin Experiment." And stay tuned for updates on if we find out which animal might be a good pet for our classroom!