Our Friends in the Garden

We have began a new project all about frogs! Luke and Christian were sitting in the book area looking at one of our frog books, when we all started having a discussion about them! We asked the children questions about frogs to see what all they knew...

Kylie told us, "A tadpole turns into a frog."

Sam said, "They eat bugs".

Bishop told us, "Their tongues are really long and they stick their tongue out and catch the bug!"

Some of the other comments were, "They live in a lake or pond and have sticky feet!"

This began a whole adventure! 

We sat down and looked at more interesting books that told us all about frogs, their habitats and what they eat..

That's when we went out on a mission to see if we have any frogs in our backyard! ;o)

                 
 We searched the vegetable garden where we looked under the green planter and GUESS WHAT WE FOUND LIVING UNDER THERE, A FAMILY OF FROGS!!!

 Coach Chip helped us get the frog out where he picked it up and showed all of us closely what it looks like!

We started a mini science lesson where Coach Chip showed us when you open the frog's mouth you can see his eyeballs from the inside!!!! We were all in shock and very excited to see that!

After we found out that two frogs lived there..we caught them and put them in a cage to help us start on our work!

 We all sat around with our friends, the frogs, and drew a picture of them. We also looked at where they live, their HABITAT (a new term we are learning)! We talked about how the habitat is the vegetable garden.  We sat around the garden and we observed dragonflies in the garden.  One of our books showed us a frog eating a dragonfly, so the children said, "The frogs like it here because they can eat those dragonflies!"   We saw lots of bugs underneath the planter like crickets and beetles, and the children made comments that the frogs would eat those too.  There was lots of slimy mud! We added all of those details to our drawings!

After the frogs helped us with our drawings, we had to let them back out to go back to their homes! We decided to come check back on them tomorrow to see how they are doing and if they are still there!

We went back in our classroom and shared our drawings one by one. We told our friends what we drew and about our new frog friend!

After finding the frogs, we started to wonder why the frog lives under the planter? We asked the children this question. Sam said, "That's his home and maybe he is sleeping under there". 

One child said, "He is hiding under there!"

We referred back to a book where we saw different animals eating frogs, and the children made the connection that the frog could be hiding from animals like "birds and snakes" so that they would not be eaten.

So now we are one a mission to find out why he lives there and not anywhere else in the backyard?! Check back soon to see how mission number 2 is going!