Introduce the concept of pet care to the children by allowing them to participate in a show and tell session. If the school allows, have the children bring in their pets and discuss how they care for their pet. If pets aren't allowed in school, the children can bring in drawings or photographs of their pet instead. If a child doesn't have a pet, she can draw a picture of a pet she would like to have and talk about how she would care for the animal. The children will learn about pet care basics from each other.
Assign a type of pet to each child, and ask the children to have a parent help them learn about caring for their assigned pet. The children can bring in pictures of the pet and share what they have learned. This activity allows the preschoolers to learn about a wide variety of pets and their needs, such as snakes, frogs, lizards and even spiders or insects.
If your school allows, purchase a pet for the classroom and keep it at school. Hypo-allergenic pets such as lizards, fish, turtles, frogs or small non-hazardous snakes are appropriate for the classroom. Under your supervision, the children can take turns feeding and caring for the pet. The preschoolers can gain practical experience in a hands-on manner, which will help the students remember how to handle a pet carefully or how to feed it. In addition, having a real pet to take care of drives home the point that caring for a living thing is a big responsibility.
Preschoolers can learn about pet care from classroom activities, such as worksheets in which they have to match the pet with the type of food it eats or with its habitat, for example. Alternatively, the children can make animal masks and put on a play that illustrates animal care and responsible pet ownership. Another activity the children can participate in is to sort plastic figures of animals into wild animals and house pets. This could lead into a discussion about why the average person can't have a leopard or lion for a pet, for instance.