Life Cycle Of A Frog

Their are so many fun things to learn about Frogs! We have been focusing on the life cycle of a Frog along with creating our own images of Frogs that interest us!

We have read through books and looked on the computer to see pictures of each step in the life cycle. This helped us  learn that Frogs lay their eggs in water or wet places.  A floating clump of eggs is called frog spawn.

Bishop really loved this frog with the one bright green stripe along his whole body! We looked at how the front arms had four fingers and the back legs had five 5 toes on their webbed feet! 

One of the ways we would like to create the life cycle is with clay! First we made lots of eggs because as we saw in the book, many eggs are produced!  We learned that ducks, fish, insects, and other water creatures eat the eggs.

We talked about how tadpoles eat very small plants that stick to larger plants in the water.  These tiny plants are called algae.

                  

                                               Eggs...                                                Tadpoles...

                                    Tadpole with 2 legs...                      Young frog with a tail..

   Adult Frog!!

 Another way we are creating a Life Cycle is by making a collage of each growing stage! After looking at each step closer we drew the image and used watercolors to finish it off!

By: Luke

The egg begins as a single cell. Several thousand  are sometimes laid at once. It becomes surrounded by a jellylike covering, which protects the egg. 

By: Sam

The tadpole has a long tail, and lives in the water. It is extremely vulnerable, and must rely on its camouflage to protect it. 

By: Bishop

Over time, the tadpole becomes even more frog like. The tail becomes much smaller, and the legs grow.

By: Christian

Finally! Eleven weeks after the egg was laid, a fully developed frog with lungs, legs, and no tail emerges from the water. This frog will live mostly on land, with occasional swims. The tiny frogs begin to eat insects and worms.

 

Frog Dissection!

After talking about a frog's anatomy, we got on the computer to begin dissecting the frog virtually! The children loved this experiment and it also helped them learn all the organs and what they were used for. We wanted to be pros in this department before we dissected our real frog! =)

Surprisingly, ALL of the children were enthusiastic about seeing the real frog's insides.  The children have seen it on the computer and have become experts on naming the organs, describing what their functions are, and understanding the location of them in the frog body as well as the human body.
The next step was seeing it up close and in person!







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Garden Mural

Along with all the different activities we have going on with our frog project we have began a mural of our Vegetable Garden.  This is where the frog family lives and we just replanted our garden for the new Fall season!

As we began on this mural ,we talked about each plant, fruit, and seed we have in the garden. We looked at books, pictures, and on the computer to study the shape, size, and colors of the plants in our garden.  We learned a lot of interesting new facts about all of them! This helped us continue on with our pictures...

This student wanted to create a big sunflower plant like the one we used to have in our vegetable garden! We talked about what sunflower seeds are grown and used for...Something we definitely remember is that one thing sunflower seeds are used for is for birds to eat, because that is what we put in our bird feeders! ;o)

One cool fact we learned was that a sunflower plant can grow to reach 12 foot in height in 6 short months!

The children picked what they would like to draw and paint. They focused on all the detail of the one plant or vegetable they chose!

Creating a tomato plant!

We had a conversation about how we can make sure our tomato plant grows. Noah responded, "We need to water the tomato plant!" We also talked about how the sunlight and lots of patience would come a long way in helping it grow! ;-)

             Working on the dirt  for the garden!          Painting the leaves for the Sunflower !

 

We loved creating a strawberry plant because this reminded us about our fruit salad project, where we saw and remembered strawberries have a ton of little seeds in them that we eat! 

This student wanted to make a zucchini plant! We talked about how they grow along the ground on a vine. Just the way he created it on his own ;-). We also learned they come in many different colors from pale yellow to dark green. One thing we wanted to find out is when they will be ready to be cooked since the younger classes always pick them off a little too early! After a little research we found out they are ready to be picked and cooked when they are under 20 cm long! We are going to remember that next time they are picked so we can measure them!!

We believe doing artwork with our students is truly beneficial to them and strive for our parents to also continue encouraging their child to show and express all their thoughts and creativity through their art work!

Here are some key points to how Art can help your child grow and enhance their mind!

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        Your child learns to think creatively, with an open mind.

• Your child learns to observe and describe, analyze and interpret.

• Your child learns to express feelings, with or without words.

•  Your child discovers that there is more than one right answer, multiple points of view.

• Your child learns to collaborate with other children and with adults.
• Arts build confidence.  Because there is not just one right way to make art, every child can feel pride in his or her original artistic creations.

Some of our final pieces!

Strawberry Plant By: Grace

Tomato Plant By: Noah

Zucchini and  Strawberry Plant By: Bishop and Grace

Sunflower By: Isela

 

Frog Exploration

On to mission number 2! The next morning after finding the frog family in our vegetable garden, we wanted to explore the rest of the backyard to check if any other frog families were living back there!  We were on a hunt to see if there were any other "frog habitats" in our yard.

                                                                                 First we checked the back two trees by the playground. We looked in the tree to see if their were any tree frogs Hendrix was telling us about. He told us that tree frogs can climb trees.  We didn't see any, so we looked around on the ground and on the fence.

Then we walked over to the butterfly garden...we thought we saw something in the ground..so we grabbed the net to see if we could catch anything, But their was nothing there, absolutely NO FROGS!

                                                                       still searching.....

After searching our whole backyard, we came inside and talked about how the frog family ONLY lived in the vegetable garden, we were all wondering why they picked that garden to be their home....

We talked about the differences in the vegetable garden compared to the trees, the open areas with dirt and grass, and the butterfly garden.  We talked about how the frogs need a "habitat" with places to hide from predators, they need dark moist areas (like under the planter), and a place where lots of bugs go so they can eat them.  These were all things that we could only find in our vegetable garden - which makes it the PERFECT HABITAT for our frogs!!
We all sat around a big white piece of paper and created different pictures about the frogs, what we thought about them, their habitat ,and what they eat...

The children created such imaginative thoughts and pictures about the frog family!

" I made the garden they live in."-Luke

"I made a frog eating a dragonfly."-Christian

"I made my frog living in his garden."-Caysen

"My frog was walking around in the garden and than ate a fly."-Musa

" I made a princess with a frog!"-Kylie

After making different pictures and sharing all our ideas about the frog family,  we started to have a conversation about what humans have inside their bodies? The students told me different things like bones, food, blood, muscles and the heart!

Than I asked what do frogs have? The students responded bones, frog bones,brain, bugs inside their tummy, skeleton , skin and blood!

This conversation about the human and frog anatomy sparked us to begin focusing on important body parts of a human and a frog. We are trying to learn the similarities and differences between the two!

Virtual Dissection Of A Frog!

What better way to help the children see the anatomy of a frog than by dissecting!  

We actually found a website that let us dissect a frog virtually! The children got to look and see how the whole process worked. This helped us to start remembering the body parts and what they are used for. Please feel free to do this activity with your child so it can help them learn the body parts!
 http://www.surgery-games.org/43/Dissect-a-Frog.html

• Heart
• Liver
• Lungs
• Stomach
• Bladder
• Small Intestines
• Large Intestines
• Eye
• Tongue
• Brain

The children worked on the virtual dissection for such a long time and with such interest, that we will be soon dissecting a frog in our class.  We are also taking a field trip to the Museum of Natural Science to have a tour and a customized lesson plan just for us on FROGS!  How exciting, stay tuned!