Year 6 Newspaper On Caring for a Virtual Pet Virtual pets are computerised pets to prove to your parents that you can look after a real pet. If you treat it very well your mum and dad might think that you are good with pets and they might buy a real pet for you. They are pocket-sized pets so that you can look after them everywhere you go (except school). You can get different animals like cats, dogs, dinosaurs, fish, chickens, birds, aliens, babies and hamsters. When they beep they need some care. Sometimes their waste needs to be cleaned up, and they will need food, drink, they'll need a bath, the heater temperature changed, they'll need to be played with, they'll need to study, the light will need to be turned on and off at night, they'll need medicine and discipline. This is done by pressing different combinations of buttons. The problem with virtual pets is that every minute of the night it keeps on beeping, but you can switch the sound off. Virtual pets do eventually go to sleep, but very late at night. Virtual pets can also give the time.   Some virtual pets are for younger children who are only at school for two or three hours or so at a playgroup or nursery. I wanted a virtual pet because it sounded very interesting with all the beeping around the house. I was interested in looking after both real and virtual pets. I wanted to have a responsibility, and now I have. I was usually very bored because my other pets didn't want to play, and I was getting bored with my computer and I wanted something to look after, so I got a virtual pet. I found that they aren't such a big deal. When I got home from school my Dinkie Dino virtual pet was always dead because it needed care every two or three hours (it survived at the weekends though). My other virtual pet somehow survives until I get home from school. Some children expect their mum to look after it all day while they're at school, and get cross when mum forgets. When a virtual pet dies you need to reprogram it to start it up again. It seems that people can buy different Tamagotchies to match their personality.   Some other weird pets are pet rocks, flour and egg babies. In the USA, they sometimes get older children at secondary school to see what it's like to look after real babies with egg or flour babies. They give an egg or a bag of flour to a boy or girl and they have to look after it for at least a week. They have to take it everywhere they go, never leave it unattended or let it get damaged.   Pet rocks were once popular with hippies in the 1960s. Take my advice, don't get a pet rock!! All they do is sit in the corner all day doing nothing. Only get one if you are very, very desperate. You would have to be! If you do, you must feed it (the food will be wasted unless you eat it). Pretend to clean up after it (you won't need to, unless you are nuts), put it to bed and give it a nap (it's not alive anyway) and last but not least, have a funeral when you think it dies (don't make it a big funeral or you will just waste your money - have a nice small funeral, that is if you have one!)   Don't get a pretend pet, they do just the same boring thing. Please be sensible, get a real pet - it's much more fun!   by Corinne and Richard

[ Home | School | Events | Children | Photos | Magazine | Computers | Links ]
Return to Newspaper Index Page