I Love Stuffed Animals

Many emergency agencies use stuffed animals for a very good purpose. They carry stuffed animals with them to give to children who are involved in emergencies or traumatic events.

A stuffed animal can help to calm the fears of a child whose world has just been torn apart.  The stuffed animal becomes a real friend in the emergency situation by giving the child something else to focus on and to hold on to during the crisis.

Many fire departments, police departments, ambulance services, battered women’s shelters, etc. have such a program in place and regularly collect teddy bears and other types of stuffed animals for emergency use.   If you are interested in donating stuffed animals to such a cause, you can contact these types of organizations in your local community.  If such a program doesn’t exist, you might want to start one.

A stuffed animals for emergencies drive can be conducted throughout the community by publicizing it in the local newspaper and perhaps by leaving donation boxes at local businesses and schools.  Clubs or schools may be interested in making this a project for the benefit of the community.

If you are able to donate a stuffed animal for emergency use or to start a program for collecting emergency stuffed animals, you will greatly assist a child in need.

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A classroom stuffed animal such as this polar bear can be a special education treat for the children.

Classroom stuffed animals can be a wonderful idea.  Stuffed animals can help to teach the children about different kinds of animals as well as teach other skills as well.

Sometimes a teacher will choose a specific animal as the classroom mascot for a whole year, and the children will decorate and do activities around the theme of that animal.  There are almost endless possibilities for classroom learning surrounding a stuffed animal.

An obvious idea is to have the children learn everything about their classroom stuffed animal by watching video, doing a coloring page, writing a fiction story about the animal, writing a report or reports about the various aspects of the animal or perhaps learning about the habitat of that animal as well.  

It is often a good idea to choose a wild animal for the classroom animal, but a teacher may also choose a dog or cat and teach the children about responsible pet ownership and about adopting an animal from a shelter.  Perhaps the children could vote on which animal they wish to adopt as their classroom animal for the year.

Another idea is to have a classroom stuffed animal that the children take home with them on a rotating basis.  I have heard of cases where the stuffed animal has a journal of his activities, and the children add to the journal daily with both classroom activities of the animal and with pictures or activities from when the animal goes home with each child.  Children will love to look back over a journal as the year progresses to see the stories, artwork and general history of their special classroom stuffed animals.

With a little imagination and a lot of fun, a classoom stuffed animal can be a memorable friend that will give each child a memory for a lifetime. I will guarantee that each child will remember this experience well beyond their school years.

If your class has done this, be sure to leave a comment about your experiences and any tips that may help another teacher to implement this idea!

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Here’s a safety tip from the Jollyville Fire Department web site that I find to be a very good use of a teddy bear or another stuffed animal:

The fire department suggests that you keep a teddy bear (any stuffed animal would work) in the child’s car safety seat when it is not in use.  You then put the stuffed animal in the front passenger seat beside you to serve as a visual reminder that when the stuffed animal is in the seat beside you, your child is secured in the child safety seat behind you.

There have been a lot of children who have died because their busy parents forgot and left them in a hot car strapped in their “safety” seat.

Read the rest of this article entitled Children, Hot Weather, and Cars = Danger

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