Tadpoles

We  have a small water area in Holly's exploration garden. A couple week back we finally noticed some small egg masses from frogs... which we have a lot of. We went out and checked them daily, saw the growth happening in each egg mass and then one day we went out and one large mass had hatched! Little tadpoles were everywhere in the water. There was still one more egg mass that had to hatch, about two days later it did. We now have a lot of tadpoles to observe both outdoors and indoors.

Holly carefully scooped a few cups of pond water and then scooped up some tadpoles. She had some from each hatch. It was really neat to see the growth difference that just two days or so made. Tadpoles grow so quickly!!!

Indoors we set up a small tank for them, gathered all of our books and I downloaded a great app on our Ipad for a virtual frog dissection. These materials have been used a lot since! We looked up the proper care of tadpoles, even though we do this each year I wanted her to still research and learn. I was going to put up a poster for Hudson to watch the changes as this is his first experience - Holly has done this each year. Instead of a store bought poster Holly decided to make one. She worked hard on it, making sure to include the major changes and draw pictures of each stage! It turned out great!!!

An Ant Nest

Today we red through a great little book from National Geographic on ants called All About Ants, it was interesting! In this book we focused on their homes, how they work and how they look. We also looked through some other books for examples. Holly then described to me an ants nest and set off to draw one out.

She was sure to include the various chambers for food, eggs, sleeping and the queen ant. Holly actually did two different drawings until she was happy with the final product. She then sat down and walked me through her nest, how it was laid out and where the various chambers were. It turned out fantastic!

Colorful Adjectives

I found a really cute lesson online a week or so ago and planned it into our week - it was a great way to tie in our rainbow/color theme we've been working on as well as a fun game we love called Silly Sentences. I did it a bit different or simpler because Holly is only in kindergarten. Here is a link: http://theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/2011/03/color-word-adjective-activity-first.html

The idea is to work on adjectives describing colors, brain storm adjectives, write a sentence with your brainstormed ideas and then draw a picture that coordinates. This was a perfect way to enjoy the best of both worlds for her (writing/drawing) and best of all she really enjoyed it!

"I am walking through bright red flowers."

"This is a warm orange sunset.""I like happy yellow sunflowers.""I am playing on the fresh green grass.""The sky blue butterfly landed on a leaf.""I ate sweet purple berries."