Pets!

We have had a really great first week!  All of the students are really great; I can tell we are going to have a great year!  One thing that I love about the students already is that they all seem so excited to learn!  Something they have been very interested in learning about is our classroom pets!

First, our temporary pets...temporary because once they turn into butterflies, we will be releasing them.  Here is Scooter (named because he was scooting backwards while eating milkweed) and Junior (named because he looks like Scooter and I thought the suggested name of Junior Scooter was too obvious! :)  They are Monarch Butterflies and our wonderful aide, Mrs. Anderson, searched high and low to find them for us!  We are so excited to watch them grow and change over the course of the next few weeks!

Scooter

and Junior!

 Here are our two permanent pets...first Freddy the anole.  He looks a bit reddish in the picture, but he is brown.  He also changes to green.  He eats crickets and loves to lounge in the sun lamp's heat.

And my favorite pet, Maizey (named after Maize and Blue!)!  Maizey is a Crested Gecko, sometimes called an Eyelash Gecko.   When I got him, he was very young and I assumed (incorrectly) that he was a girl...oops!  He is a great pet and is very active, so the students love watching him. 

Some neat facts about Crested Geckos:

They have a prehensile tale; meaning they can hang by their tail.
If threatened, they can lose their tail.  If they lose their tail it will not grow back.
They were thought to be extinct until the late 1990's until they were discovered living on a tropical island, New Caledonia.
They jump a lot.
They do not have eyelids, but have skin that looks like eyelashes, giving them the nickname "Eyelash Gecko."
Since they do not have eyelids, they can not close their eyes to sleep or to moisten their eyes.  To sleep their pupils get very thin.  To moisten their eyes, they lick their eyeballs.
In the wild, Crested Geckos eat fruit.  As pets, they eat fruit baby food and the occasional cricket.
For more information visit Pangea Reptile.
Click here to see the different colors Crested Geckos can be.

Be sure to ask your child about our pets!!  I allow the pets to go home with students during Winter and Spring break, so I will be asking around those times if anyone is interested.  It is a great way to have different pets in your home!!