Meet Rosie!

We have Box Top challenges at my school.  Families send in Box Tops and classrooms compete to collect the most Box Tops.  We won the second Box Top challenge of the school year and the prize was $50 to be used for materials for my classroom.  We had a class discussion which concluded with a vote and the outcome was that we would spend the prize money on a pet hamster for our classroom.

Because teachers need permission from their principals to have a class pet in our district, I asked our current principal if she would let us have a hamster, and she agreed.  If you would like to read about the many benefits of having a class pet, the Pet Care Trust has a website that discusses the benefits of children having a pet. 

Although $50 is a generous amount, I could not purchase all that is needed to keep a hamster for that amount, and so I invited the families of my students to donate.  Two days later, I had collected another $130.49 from the families of my students, which is a very generous donation.  So, I ordered the cage and extras needed from Amazon, and last weekend I visited the area pet stores to find the store that offered the greatest variety of dwarf hamsters.

Because I wanted to include my students in the process of picking out the hamster as much as possible, I sent a note home inviting families to meet me at a local Petco (who had eight dwarf hamsters in stock) on Wednesday, March 11, at 5 p.m.   The evidence of my students' engagement and investment in school became obvious because 50% of my class arrived at Petco at the designated date and time to help pick out our hamster.  Here are some pictures of my first graders (and their siblings!) viewing the cages and deciding which hamster they wanted.

This is Mardi, the wonderful salesperson at Petco who helped us pick out our hamster.  She was knowledgeable, patient, and kind to all of my students. 

Because the donations were so generous, I was able to purchase quite a souped-up cage for our hamster.  It has two levels including a balcony, three nesting places, two slides, a sand bath, and a wheel. 

Finally, this is a picture of Rosie, our hamster.  Rosie's name was selected by my students, and she is named after one of the main characters in the Bella and Rosie series of guided reading books published by Pioneer Valley books.  The Bella and Rosie series contains multiple books at multiple levels.  All of my students, no matter their current guided reading level, have independently read Bella and Rosie books.  Their choice of Rosie as a name is indicative of the high priority they place on reading in their lives, as well as their ability and desire to connect what they read to other parts of life. 

This is Rosie.  She is about 10 weeks old in this picture.

Thank you to all of the families of my students for your support throughout this process.  Please know that Rosie is happy at school in her new cage.  She has seventeen "owners" who think, as one of them so eloquently stated, she is, "just the best little critter there ever was."