zoo

Buttercup

One of the fun things about being a kid is the chance to explore nature. Being a big kid about some things it seems a good idea to have and maintain a class zoo.

As everyone knows by now we have a class hamster. She is a regular, short hair, hamster. After a voting process the class has decided to name her Buttercup.
We received her on September 2nd. She is a full grown hamster of about 4 months of age. She will let Mrs. Slaven handle her when we are alone in the room but is slowly becoming friends with the class and as they become used to feeding her treats and she learns to trust them we will move into petting and grooming her. The class will also help in the care of her cage and in feeding and watering her.
Right now her favorite foods are twinkies, Apple Jacks and pumpkin seeds.

Our Class Zoo Updates

Our fish is a male betta. He is totally red and will be moving to a new home soon. We have not taken time to name him yet but are hoping we can do that on Friday. He is becoming used to our class and will liven up when the kids come to the room in the morning or anyone comes to the fish bowl to talk to him. We are thinking he might be trainable. Rumors are some bettas will come to the surface and take food from your fingers. We will have to try this when we think he might be comfortable enogh with us.

Yes, we have a class frog. She is a Long-toed African Water Frog. She lives in a small aquarium made especially for frogs. Her feeding habits are in question as we never see her eat. Even through we are feeding her official frog food.
She likes to hide in the shell and little plant we put into her aquarium. We even had to change the position of the shell because we were afraid she might get herself stuck under there and die. She must breath air and that means coming to the surface to breath. She likes her water cloudy. We are having a little trouble with that idea. We like things clear. But we are starting to understand we are not frogs.
We would love to take it out of the water and let it jump around. It can do this but we understand that her skin is so paper thin that it would be a really bad idea. Also we have learned that these kinds of frogs are notorious for escaping. There are entire web sites devoted to their care and stories about how they will escape at any chance. Our aquarium lid is never ever lifted! We don't want anything to happen to her. As they will only live an hour out of water. And doing CPR on our frog isn't one of our favorite ideas.