High School Activities

[Ringo]

I am looking for good activities or worksheets for ball pythons that I can use in a High School or Middle School classroom. I want to incorporate my bp in the classroom and just trying to come up with good ideas. Any info is greatly appreciated.

[seanj91]

im gonna be a junior next yr in highschool.. my advice is do sumthing with anatomy sumthin like that

[SapphireTigress]

Punett squares and simple/advanced genetics. A lot more fun than pea plants.

My daughter did a science project on "tricking" the ball python into breeding at any time of year.

Personally, I would like to see a diagram of snake anatomy, both male and female, and I'd like to know the calorie counts of rats, ASFs, and mice and the conversion to gram growth for the snake.

As it pertains to the current situation with the proposed Wildlife ban, I think research on how touchy the environmental systems for BPs really are would help establish how BPs aren't a threat to native habitats in event of stupid owners.

I'll think some more. We've got so much information around the house that I don't know if the science teachers will accept that the kids have been part of this year-to-year research, the size of snake influencing the amount of eggs, health problems...

[TanyaL]

Punett squares and simple/advanced genetics. A lot more fun than pea plants.

My daughter did a science project on "tricking" the ball python into breeding at any time of year.

Personally, I would like to see a diagram of snake anatomy, both male and female, and I'd like to know the calorie counts of rats, ASFs, and mice and the conversion to gram growth for the snake.

As it pertains to the current situation with the proposed Wildlife ban, I think research on how touchy the environmental systems for BPs really are would help establish how BPs aren't a threat to native habitats in event of stupid owners.

I'll think some more. We've got so much information around the house that I don't know if the science teachers will accept that the kids have been part of this year-to-year research, the size of snake influencing the amount of eggs, health problems...

I second these ideas!

[Ringo]

Some of those are some ideas I had in mind. Anatomy will definitely be taught. The wildlife ban is a great idea for a research paper. I will also have the class keep daily records and then do some spreadsheet work and basic calculations for temperature and humidity. Stuff like that.

[PythonWallace]

All good ideas so far. If you can swing it, I'd do a couple of breading projects, maybe het x het breedings along with the genetics lessons. BPs might be hard since most of them hatch in the summer, but I always thought that schools should let students participate in breeding reptiles to increase awareness and interest. If kids see babies hatching, and had something to do with it, they would likely really get into reptiles. Especially seeing recessive phenotypes hatch from a class pair of hets.
In my HS biology class we had an iguana, and the students either liked him or they didn't. I think classroom breeding projects are interactive and interesting enough to get more kids interested in reptiles.