Look What Bear Found!

I was going for a walk with my husband and my son's dog, Bear, last week and we found these tadpoles on steroids.  Bear found a frog at the edge of a pond and when he investigated the frog, he also noticed these huge tadpoles in the water. I was able to catch enough for all four first grade teachers to have an aquarium in their classroom.  We kept them for a week and then returned them to the pond.  We also found some toad eggs, but they are not visible in these pictures.  We are studying ponds in science, so observing tadpoles is a very natural tie in to our theme. 

In early childhood it is important that science activities be hands on, driven by the child's curiosity, and authentic, because developmentally young children learn by using their senses.  To be effective, I use my first grader's own natural curiosity to guide our investigations.  Observations are a terrific way to build oral language. 

(I put the pen beside the aquarium to give you an idea of just how big they were - they were about 3 inches long!)

Our guiding question was, "What can we learn about tadpoles by observing them?"

We observed them with and without magnifying glasses for several days and I documented some of the statements that my first graders made:
"Their front legs grow first and then their back legs."
"They can swim up and down and back and forth."
"They are definitely amphibians because they have smooth, wet, skin."
"They mostly don't swim.  They mostly rest."
"They don't group together.  They stay by themselves."
"If you tap on the glass, they get nervous."
"They are camouflaged.  They look like the water plants."
"They have gills on just one side of their head that open and shut, open and shut, open and shut."
"Toad eggs are black.  They grow in long skinny lines like necklaces."
"Even when they are still, they still move a little, little bit."

Yesterday I found a 15" garter snake in one of my gardens.  My husband fed it a live earthworm today, which it ate in about 10 seconds.  Tomorrow I am bringing the snake to school in the same aquarium that I brought the tadpoles in for my first graders to make more observations. 

Here is the garter snake in an aquarium in my classroom.

The snake will also tie into our pond theme. As you can see by reading their observations, they have become very astute.  This is a video of a garter snake just like the one we caught swimming in a pond.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRivEM6HgYY)

And this is a picture of Bear, my son and his girlfriend's Borador, who found the frog that led him to the tadpoles, which in turn gave my students the opportunity to observe the tadpoles.