Frogs and Toads: Part 1

After a two-week hiatus due to illness, we are back to our usual schedule of learning fun. We caught some tadpoles, and then naturally decided to find out more about frogs and toads. I have always loved catching amphibians, and it seems that my daughter also has this curiosity. 

We started off with many books surrounding our theme (fiction and nonfiction, as usual).

Books:

• Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
• Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel
• Days with Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
• Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
• Fantastic Frogs! by Fay Robinson
• Felix's Hat by Catherine Bancroft
• Life Cycles: Tadpole to Frog by Camilla de la Bedoyere
• Why Frogs are Wet by Judy Hawes
• Commander Toad and the Dis-Asteroid by Jane Yolen
• Poison Dart Frogs by Jennifer Owings Dewey

Activities:

• Experiment: Raising tadpoles. We caught some tadpoles from a small pond at my parent's house. My dad said he saw a very fat toad sitting by the water's edge, so we are guessing that they are American Toad tadpoles. Time will tell. Evie is very excited to witness their metamorphosis. We have seven of them. As they grow, we will feed them boiled spinach and lettuce until they are large enough to eat mosquito larvae. 

• Pretend play/ small world play: Sensory bin with glow-in-the-dark slime. I found some glow-in-the-dark slime at The Dollar Tree, as well as a bag of toy "reptiles," which included two plastic frogs along with the turtles, snakes, and lizards. I filled the bottom part of a storage container with water, added some twigs, bark, and dead leaves, and set a toy frog on top of the floating bark. Then I took some black beads (pony beads), and pushed them into the glob of slime to look like frog eggs. It didn't take long for the tannins to seep from the wood and turn the water orange, and then we emptied it. We will use the same tub to set up a habitat for the growing tadpoles. 

• Pretend play: lily pad hop. I cut out lily pad shapes from green construction paper, then labelled them with letters and numbers. I then used painter's tape to fix them to the floor. We then played a few hopscotch-style games with them, including one where I randomly called out a letter or number and she had to hop over to it. I used letters A-D and numbers 1-3. 

• Activity: Hunt for frogs and toads. We only found one frog, which was too fast for us to catch. I think it was a wood frog. But we also found an American Toad, which I caught and held for Evie to examine up close. We talked about the differences between frogs and toads. She held it for a moment before it jumped out of her hands, and then we watched it hop along the ground. 

Videos (both on Amazon Prime video)

• Nature: Fabulous Frogs narrated by David Attenborough  (this one was our favorite and we actually watched it twice)
• Show Me Science Biology: Understanding Frogs & Toads