Constellation OC: Pet Care and Animal Advocacy Curriculum Highlights

Constellation kids had been looking forward to this pet care and animal advocacy project for quite some time!

Even though not all of us have pets, we agree that we all love animals and want to help take care of them!

We began our project by thinking about what types of animals people keep as pets (and what animals people keep as pets but shouldn't...) Who knew that in some states gerbils are illegal?

We enjoyed reading many non-fiction stories about how to care for common pets such as dogs, cats and hamsters. We compared hamsters to other popular small mammal pets such as gerbils, rabbits and ferrets using venn-diagrams. After learning about how to best take care of hamsters, we began constructing our own special hamster homes. We read that hamsters need different areas in their cages for different things-- an area for their bed, an area for the restroom, an area for playing and an area for sleeping. You can see that the students really thought about that when planning out and constructing their hamster homes!

This home has a special rest area--complete with comfy bedding!

We learned that hamsters like to climb. These cups at different levels are perfect for climbing!

Hamsters love to crawl through big tunnels.

Many students made cute little hamsters to put inside their homes.

Pets are a lot of fun to have, but they are of course a huge responsibility. We learned about two pets (a cat and a dog) who were left behind during Hurricane Katrina in the book The Two Bobbies. After looking at websites like the ASPCA and Red Cross, we were able to come up with good plans for our pets in the event of extreme weather. Always have enough food and water for your pet, just as people would stock up on food and water before a storm. If you need to evacuate, try to make an evacuation plan that includes your pet so they don't get left behind!

We also loved hearing the story of Winter the dolphin in the book Winter's Tail. Winter lost her tail in a crab trap and was transported to a marine rehab facility in Florida to heal. While she was there, an engineer developed a special prosthetic tail just for Winter! Students watched Winter (and another rescued dolphin, Hope) on the aquarium's web cams.

Constellation kids already knew a lot about dolphins from our ocean life study. They used their prior knowledge, along with new information we learned from Winter's Tale, to write about how dolphins help people and what we like most about dolphins.

Finally, we expanded beyond pets to learn about vulnerable, endangered and extinct animals (and what the difference between those terms is!). Partners read about a specific animal and filled out an information sheet about the animal and why it is vulnerable, endangered or extinct to share with the rest of the class. It is sad to learn that the main reason pandas are endangered is because people are destroying their natural habitats. The California Grizzly Bear is extinct because early settlers to California would capture them and force them to fight other vicious animals. Some animals, like the giant tortoise, are endangered because of predators. Students realized that we need to fight to protect these amazing creatures!

People can do a lot to help animals. But did you know that animals do a lot to help people? We enjoyed reading about different pets that act as therapy animals. We were amazed to hear about a dog that can sense when her owner, a little girl with diabetes, has low blood sugar! There is also a monkey who helps a man in a wheelchair with everyday tasks, like turning on and off lights and opening containers!

Although we read a lot of non-fiction, we did enjoy some fun fiction stories, like the book "Dear Mr. Mutt". In the story, frustrated dogs write to Mr. Mutt to help him solve their pet problems! Students pretended to write to Mr. Mutt about a pet problem. We then traded letters and responded to their problems as Mr. Mutt. It was very fun!