Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Pond Month: Frog Week

This is the first month I am making a concerted effort to introduce regular science type stuff in our curriculum.  This will probably slowly evolve over time (as all my subjects have), but for now the plan is to pick one basic environment (for example this month is Pond) and then focus in on a specific animal group that lives in that environment (last week was Frogs).  The idea is to not only teach them about specific animals, but to also help them learn what animals live in close proximity to one another, how they interrelate, and other nifty facts.  Honestly - I'm learning almost as much as they are already!

I found the videos online - like youtube clips from national geographic and stuff, and one that was even on Netflix.  I also borrowed some short cartoons from the library.  I spread out about 1-2 videos each day to help break up the monotony of reading, lectures, and homework and keep the day flowing. I also borrowed about 20 books from the library (no joke) that had frogs as a subject.  Only 3 were actually informative books, and I used those for teaching about the frogs, their life cycle, and their environment.  The rest of the books were purely for fun, so the girls could get attached to their new animal friend and want to learn more.
It's a little hard to keep a 3 yr old's attention through everything, but Tahlia is fairly good at entertaining herself.  I was very surprised because she had almost no interest in watching the frog videos with her sisters, but was really interested and sat still through all the educational books.  Go figure!

 On Day 2, I got the girls to create a craft based on the life cycle of the frog.  We had read "Tale of a Tadpole" on Day 1, so I wanted to see how much they remembered and get them to do something fun too and make it all stick a bit more.

The craft required: 1 piece of blue construction paper, cotton balls, glue, a black marker, google eyes, scissors, leaves, maple seeds (or something else very tadpole like), a green crayon, and a picture of a frog (I printed some on green paper).
 The end results were really neat.  I basically just gave them instructions and provided the supplies.  First we glued the leaf on the paper to represent lily pads, then we used the black marker to make dots on the cotton balls (the eggs) and glued the cotton balls to the paper near the leaves.  Next they added different sizes of the maple seeds for the tadpoles and even used their green crayon to add back and front legs to a few.  Last they each glued their frog on a leaf and added some google eyes.

 Although Bryan was away for 3 wks in Yakama doing some sort of training where you simultaneously do nothing,  yet are worked so hard you are exhausted, he was able to be home one day during our frog week because of a class (his, not ours).  On Day 3 he took the girls out to the pond by our house and went tadpole hunting, but we didn't find any tadpoles - they've already all turned into frogs I guess.  They did manage to find a frog though.
 Bryan was a great help, he talked to the girls all about frogs and their camouflage!  He compared his gear and the frogs skin, and said how both of them help them hide from things and keep them safe.
 All the girls wanted a chance to hold the frog of course, but none wanted to give him a kiss and see if anything would happen. ;) lol


 Finally we let the poor thing go back in the little creek next to the pond and watched him swim a bit.
 On Day 4 I found, printed, and put together this frog book.  I don't remember which blog I found it on now... I'll have to pay better attention and start adding links to my resources, sorry, this post is kinda after the fact and on the fly.  I read my little book to them and showed them how I colored in the different parts of the frog that each page talked about.  On Day 5 I had Abbagail & Serenity each color their own frog book to see if they remembered the names of each body part.  They did really well!

This is one thing I did not know about frogs before dong these lessons!
We finished up frog week on Day 6 with a quiz on frogs.  I pulled out the frog books they'd made and their frog life cycle picture and asked them questions on all the things they had learned.  Abbagail and Serenity passed with flying colors - getting almost every question right without any prompting from me, Tahlia... eh, she's 3, I couldn't even really get her to sit with us long enough to ask her any questions, but I know she did learn quite a bit as she participated in a lot of the Q & A times before the last day.

So that was frog week.  Fast, fun, and best of all - it was completely free!


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