family pets

Our pets are a very important part of our homeschooling life.  I think keeping the pets around makes a great ongoing science lesson, besides encouraging responsibility and such.  We have quite a few pets, so keeping up with food, water, playtime, and tidying the cages is quite a bit of work.

My youngest, who is four years old going on twenty,  is allergic to cats and dogs, so we have to stick with smaller caged pets.  My 11 year old son is great with all the animals and makes sure to spend cuddle time with each of them nearly everyday, with the exception of the fish and the hermit crabs, who I can say are not big on cuddling.

Here are a few of our pets.  I will have to make a point of getting pictures of the rest of the gang soon.

This is either Felix or Zeus, one of our two leopard geckos. My son seems to be the only one who can tell them apart.

We have had our two leopard geckos for over two years now.  They are picky eaters and will only dine on the finest crickets.  Yum…LOL.

This is Achilles the gerbil. We've only had him for a few months. He is the fourth gerbil we've had.

Achilles’  favorite hobby seems to be chewing cardboard.  He also enjoys running on his wheel while we’re trying to watch TV.

This is Porky. He is our newest pet. My four year old son received him as a pet from his aunt for Christmas. We love dwarf hamsters and have had quite a few.

Porky is a baby dwarf hamster.  He seems to greatly enjoy eluding my grip when I try to get him out of his cage.  My eleven year old son is great at taming our pets to enjoy being handled, so I’m sure Porky will calm down soon.  Last night my husband called our son “The Hamster Whisperer.”

This is Bean our hedgehog and the mascot of our blog. He is about five months old.

Bean has been an interesting pet so far.  He’s litter trained which I think is really awesome.  We are looking forward to next spring when the weather starts getting warm again, so we can take him outside.  We took him outside during the warmest fall days, and Bean really seemed to enjoy it.  We have also found that giving a hedgehog a bath is a lot of fun.  It’s very cute to watch him swim around in a sink full of water.

We also have two hermit crabs, a Betta fish, and a rat.  I hope to get pics of them up soon.  My kids and I would really like to add another pet some time soon.  I particularly would love a turtle, but my eleven year old son would really like a poison dart frog.