Homeschool Mascots

If you attended a public school or college, do you remember your school’s mascot? Was it a live animal like Stella the great horned owl for Temple University? Or perhaps the Nittany Lion of Penn State which represents the mountain lions that used to roam freely in Pennsylvania? Or maybe your school mascot represented a real person or a fictional character – after all there is the Penn Quaker who is the University of Pennsylvania mascot.

While all the mascots I mentioned in the opening paragraph are from the state of Pennsylvania, there are plenty of mascots throughout the United States, and maybe across the world, that are just as important in creating team spirit or school pride. How can we harness that team spirit and school pride in our own homeschools? What about adopting our own homeschool mascots? The easiest way may be by adopting a pet (or more than one – after all pets and animals make for great learning experiences for our children).

For some homeschooling families, a mascot may be the service trained dog who helps a child who needs emotional support or maybe they are the chickens the family raises for eggs. The mascot may even be the frog that was raised from a tadpole as part of a science project who now lives in the fish pond in the backyard. Other families may have an entire menagerie of mascots if they have fish, snakes, cats, guinea pigs, or turtles.

Our own family does not currently have a mascot. In the past, we have owned one cat, two mice, and one beta fish but they have long since passed away. Personally, I would love to have pets again when we have the time to devote to their care and our younger children get a little older so that they can take responsibility for caring for themselves almost completely. Having worked at a zoo, there are many animals that I think might make a good homeschool mascot as long as the family does their research before making any purchase or adoption.

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Thank you to Kristen at A Mom’s Quest to Teach for writing this article. Kristen is a housewife and mother to a teenage stepson and two younger children. She is a certified social studies teacher and has worked as a volunteer at a National Park site, in the education department of a metropolitan zoo, and as a high school history teacher.