Yesterday, I spent most of the day hanging up everything in my classroom from bulletin boards to word walls. I decided to stick with my theme from last year to not only save time but to also save some money. Plus my students LOVED my frog theme last year. And my favorite color is green so the color scheme of a frog friendly room works well with my teacher feng shui.When I started researching ideas for Frog Theme Classrooms last year I came across the cutest of ideas. But before I share the most adorable of these idea, I must give you a little background story. Now two years ago, I inherited two gerbles from the teacher whose position I took over and needless to say it wasn't a total success.
I learned quickly that goldfish and cheerios are not the best things to feed the little runts. They were turning circles on their wheel so fast that it was squeaking through my lessons for hours. Annoying and distracting.
And on top of that... they were let loose into the school building after a mishap in my classroom. They wandered their way through the hallways for a good week eating on everyone's science project, only to show up days later in the boys bathroom on the other side of campus.
So, I resorted to getting a pet "frog" as a class pet for the students to take care of. Not a real frog of course...even though that would be extremely entertaining especially considering one of my coworkers is petrified of frogs.
Instead, I went and bought a Webkinz frog and loaded it onto our classroom computer. The Student of the Week each week gets to take care of the frog online each morning.
Do you have a class pet?
With No Pet Food Needed,
The Penny Pinching Teacher
Your post reminded me that I have a Webikinz I have never activated!
ReplyDeletePitner's Potpourri
I love that you used a stuffed frog as a pet to fit in with your frog theme (especially since real frogs can carry solmoenella)! As a penny pinching teacher, if you ever decide to get a REAL classroom pet, you may be interested in the Pets in the Classroom grant program (www.PetsintheClassroom.org). It provides up to $150 to teachers for the purpose of classroom pets and pet supplies. I'm pretty sure it doesn't cover stuffed pets though=)
ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteA fellow teacher from across the pond (UK). I work in Year 5, which I'm guessing is grade 4 there. We also have a 'frog theme' this year and bought a Webkinz frog, although a 'wide-mouth' frog one, which the children named Filmore. It's been working really well, one idea the children came up with recently was to set up a 'filmore' blog so that when they took him home, they could write his diary entry of what happened there. They want to 'adopt' a frog, but I can't find anywhere! Safe to say, the frog theme keeps getting more and more extravagant. I love the idea of calling the classroom 'the pad'.
Loving the blog - great ideas! Keep it up :)
Hana Price, UK