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Darthannihl8or
To start of with what ages are involved? This will depend on the level you can get into.

(writing articles in the newsletter each week and getting the children to help with everything to do with the tank including testing, water changes, cleaning, medication and disease identification (hopefully the last 2 won't be needed.)

By doing the above you are certainly covering the educational part of science.

I'd love to have some familiar classroom items in there.

This could be very dangerious. Perfectly safe at school as you could supervise it all. When the children are at home it would be up to the parents, who may not be so keen or have the background knowledge.

I have never taught Primary mine was technical trade 26 years. I looked after several school tanks FW & Cold local marine. I also had a small Aquarium club running. In this I was teaching water chemistry to grade 7 where as some grade 10s could not handel it in the science class.

What area are you in there is bound to be some one who could come and help. If you are in my area I certainly will no a problem at all. Once a teacher always a teacher.

Best of luck

Keith

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Darthannihl8or!

I am so excited by what you are doing! As far I can see, you are doing a great job. The newsletter is a great idea!

Maybe you can have the children draw and color a background for tank. You can title a bulletin board or draw it into the actual background "Such and Such Elementary School of Fish". Perhaps the children can draw fish with a graduation cap or engaging in school-related activities.

If there is a bulletin board near your tank, you should keep copies of the newsletter on it. You could also keep graphs of the testing you do with the students. Students can do research on the various fish you have in your tank and then that too can be posted on the BB.

I can't really think of anything school-related that can safely go in the tank.

Hope I was of some help.....daviine (5th grade teacher)


[span class="edited"][Edited by daviine 2004-09-03 12:30][/span]

Depending upon the ages of the children you're talking about... this one is for the younger ones: In my preschool class we had a classroom turtle that would go home on the weekend with different children on a volunteer basis. One child's older sister, who was 6 or so, would color pictures of different animals and tape them to the outside of the aquarium so that "Tiny" the turtle would feel at home. You might want to pick a child each week to put their picture of fish on the tank. For an older group you could even have them research what other fish live in the same area as the ones you are keeping and have them draw those fish... it'd be very cool.

Just my 2 cents,
Beth

p.s. I didn't have the heart to tell this little girl that Tiny didn't come from a place where they had giraffes and lions... she was so cute about it.

hahaha.. "fish sticks for lunch" .. hahaha.. that's funny stuff

I don't know that I can help much.. kids aren't my speciality. But I do remember that the only things I liked doing in school were the fun ones. So it seems to me like maybe it could be a good idea to convince the kids that maintaining and studying (and even just watching) a fish tank is fun.

Like, have some kind of related reward system. The kid who gets the most right answers gets to feed the fish that day. Or offer some random extra credit, and the kids who complete it on time get to participate in the next water cycle/conditioning day. But i supposed you'd have to come up with enough different "competitions" that every kid had a chance to participate... maybe have one where the kid who runs the fastest at recess feeds the fish that day, or something. I dunno.

Maybe even get other classes involved.. that suggestion with the art department seems excellent to me. Each kid makes something (suggestions might include a cave or fake tree lookin thing, i dunno) and then have the shool board vote on which 2 or 3 are the best. Have some honorable mentions. Seems like the more recognition they get, the more fun they'll think they are having...

Maybe you could even set up a few sick tanks, and offer to help the local community with their sick fish. That would help with the last to "criteria" that you'd rather avoid in your own tank.

Anyway, i think you've got a really great idea here, and i hope you the best

--Tim

I myself am a plant geek. So I would say that it should be a planted tank. Maybe some fast growing plant like horwort and a piece of driftwood.

About the only thing i can think of is doing seasonal backgrounds, or themed backgrounds, as they dont actually go IN the water.

This is an excellent idea!

A more complex option would be to have the kids make ceramics. Often the art teacher will have ceramic clay, access to a kiln and glazes. The children could make the ornaments themselves out of a non-toxic ceramic clay. The piece is then glazed with a non-toxic glaze and fired in a kiln. These pieces can be safely placed in your tank.

*daydreaming* I can see my day now...

Chemistry: Do water testing.
Biology: Study fish and plant resporation.
English: Write a weekly report about my fish tank.
Lunch: Fish sticks.
Math: Plot the data of the nitrogen cycle.
Art: Create your own backgrounds and ornaments.

Enjoy and happy fish keeping!

My reply was based on this question...

"How can I give this tank a school/education theme?"

--garyroland.

I think this is a super great idea! I have been playing with the same notion when I start teaching next fall (one more year until graduation!). Getting the children to help with the fish tank will definitely teach them responsibility! Keep us posted on how it goes..I know I would be excited to hear about any of your ideas/lessons you use with your class. Good luck!

I work with my daughter's classroom tank. Though the years (she is in grade 5 now) The tank has taught several lessons. The Grade 4's learned the nitrate cycle, the Grade 3's learned about livebearers, bubblenests and fry. The younger the child the more basic and shorter the lesson. For example Primary and Grade 1 were taught the difference between fresh water and marine...

___________________________________________

If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

I think the educational theme in the tank could be tricky, if only because the students might try it at home and cause problems when they dont do it correctly (cause even for experienced hobbyists it can be fiddly and difficult to track down items)

About the only thing i can think of is doing seasonal backgrounds, or themed backgrounds, as they dont actually go IN the water.

Failing that, i think you might be able to put laminated items in a tank, but i havent yet tried it. The edges are sharp, so be careful



For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

As some of you may know I'm a primary school teacher and have convinced my school to get a fish tank and I am now in charge of our Aquatic Care Program. We have now had our standard 4 foot tank set up for about 2 months stocked with the following:
2 Pearl Gourami's
10 Tiger Barbs
10 Zebra Danios
6 Bronze Cories
1 RTBS

I will be writing articles in the newsletter each week and getting the children to help with everything to do with the tank including testing, water changes, cleaning, medication and disease identification (hopefully the last 2 won't be needed.)

The whole idea of this program is to educate children in the proper care of fish because I believe that more families will keep fish if they knew how to do it properly because without proper LFS advice they get Negative experiences.

I will include my newsletters for your looking. But I have a question. How can I give this tank a school/education theme? I'd love to have some familiar classroom items in there but I don't know how to.

Wow! That's pretty cool lessons! What grade are these kids in? Teaching them about ph levels seems pretty advanced, but I'm gonna guess they just know what is "good". Probably don't know what the numbers mean?

I trying to think of how to explain to kids that "neutral" equals SEVEN! lol Trying to get a kid to wrap his brain about the middle being 7 sounds tuff!

But it sounds like a great class.

-Dennis

i wish more teachers would do what you are doing. hands on education is so much better then just book learning. my 2 boys (4 and 7) have been exposed to aquarium fish since birth. they've seen firsthand egglaying, bubblenest building, schooling behavior, you name it. the lfs employees are even impressed with their budding knowledge/interest.

here's hoping your students take a real interest in their micro-worlds. and kudos to you for giving them the chance to participate in something truely interesting.

Was it an experiement to test the toxicity of ammonia?

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I remember my first "education" with fish. It was in 7th grade science class, and they had set up 3 ten gallon tanks with about 100 2" comet goldfish in each one. I am not exaggerating one bit. Needless to say, they were all dead by the end of the lesson.

For the fish you're probably keeping, dont' advertise to change more than 30 of the water at any given time.. That should be the limit..

The Amazon Nut...

Fish tanks in the classroom are always tied in with the environment and the importance of protecting our natural waterways from pollution...

We try to duplicate the fish's natural environment which includes regulation of temperature, pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

The teaching of how to use liquid test kits is always an important issue and should be incorporated.

Here in Florida one of our waterways has had a 10,000 fish kill because of the formation of bacteria that produces a toxic by-product at night, eliminating the oxygen content of the waterway.

Dissloved oxygen in tank water can be explained to children who have no concept of how fish remove dissolved oxygen in water and the importance of maintaining that dissolved oxygen.

You can explain the importance of water surface movement to allow the escape of harmful gases and the introduction of oxygen, a process we call gas exchange. You can use as an example a still and stagnant pond, algae covered, that totally lacks surface movement.

--garyroland.

I think that was a really cute report. What age of children are helping out with the tank?

I'm new to this hobby as well, but there has been some threads in the aquascaping forum about using some kind of epoxy to coat items to make them aquarium-safe. I would say you could do that with things like possibly doll furniture, etc. Little school desks, etc. Otherwise, I would think you could decorate it with window clings. I think Crayola or HP make window cling paper so you could design your own and just print it.

Again, I am new to this, so I would let the 'experts' of the site help you better with the epoxy stuff, but I know I have read some threads of people that put all sorts of stuff in their tanks (assuming they don't leech things into the water).

Keep us posted on the tank. It sounds like a great thing for the kids (I have a 5-yr old who I am trying to get excited about the fish too).

Here is a copy of my first article. Keep in mind it is written simply so kids can understand and half of it is written by the children who helped me.
[hr width='90%']
LESSON 1
WATER CHANGES

When you keep fish you need to change the water over in the tank to prevent it getting too polluted. If the tank is larger like our school tank you only need to change about 20% of the water each week. However if you have lots of fish or big fish in the tank you will need to change more of the water over. You cant just tip the water in however you need to make sure you use a de-chlorinator, the school uses a product called Aqua+ that removes the chlorine to make the water safe for fish. This week we did the first water change on our new tank and I was assisted by 2 of the students.

WATER CHANGE REPORT
We changed the water in the tank because the fish needed new water because the old water was dirty. We used a Gravel Vacuum to clean the dirt from under the gravel The first thing we did was take some of the water out using the Gravel Vacuum. We didnt put the new water straight in, after we filled the bucket up with water we added chlorine remover to take chlorine out of the water because fish dont like it. We tested the pH level of the water, everything was OK. We used a bucket that is only used for the fish tank to make sure there was no soap in it because it will poison the fish.