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!