A friend who just started teaching locally was over last night, and the kids had to show off their new pet mice. She was asking about how their care, because she’d like to get a class pet for her new classroom of elementary school students. I told her to forget the live animals, and go with the online version, like Matthew’s teacher has done. Instead of a live class pet, his class has 2 Webkinz, and the students earn points for good behavior and can use those points to go online and care for the class pets.

If your child has outgrown the virtual pet, you can turn them on to cartoon dolls instead, at sites like CartoonDollEmporium.com - it’s one of the largest and fastest growing websites for young girls, the kind of girls who grew up with Webkinz, but have outgrown them recently. For any Hannah Montana fans you may have in your house, there’s even a doll for her at the site that children can dress up and play with.

The site is kid friendly, and kid safe. It’s nice knowing there’s a place for tweens who are too old for some websites, but too young for others!