Welcome to Small Pets School: the perfect way to help your furry friends and liven up lessons!

Each week we’ll be providing a little bit of education about caring for small pets and then giving you a project to help put it into action.

By taking part not only will you learn something new but you will also be contributing to science. There’s so much that is not known about rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and other small pets, even though they have shared our homes throughout history. So, we’re hoping to mobilise a mini-army to find new information that will help experts all over the world.

Citizen Science

Did you know?
Data are facts, sometimes based on observations – things people see and take note of – or research (experiments or study) Incidentally the word data is plural and refers to more than one fact; if you are talking about a single fact the correct word is datum, although hardly anyone uses this word any more!

Information is data with meaning (where data has been structured and organised in a way that helps us to understand it and make it more useful).

Your lessons
Each week the lesson will include some ‘need to know’ information about small pets. By itself the information will help you care for your pet. But if you take the time to also do the suggested project, you will help vets and scientists. The projects are also designed to help you better understand and recall what you have learned. We also hope that we can inspire a few future vets and scientists too!

Advice for parents
Did you know that not all learning needs to involve sitting down with a book or computer? Experiential learning is a principle used in lots of different fields of education. It’s essentially learning by doing, or putting what you have learned into action. This type of learning is also useful to help embed the learning so that it is more easily remembered at a later date.

In each lesson, we’ll start by explaining what areas we are going to cover and what you can learn by completing both the lesson and the task.

So, let’s get started!

Our Syllabus for Small Pets School

  • Lesson 1 – Is your pet healthy?
    Covering biology, veterinary, ethology (the study of animal behaviour)
  • Lesson 2 – Digestion – it starts in the mouth!
    Dentistry, veterinary, biology
  • Lesson 3 – Digestion – where does it all end?
    Nutrition, veterinary, biology
  • Lesson 4 – No place like home
    Biology, veterinary, ethology
Two Rabbits Close Up