Last week we learned about the spring pond with our Exploring Nature with Children curriculum. The boys learned about the ecosystem of the pond and the lifecycle of a frog through play-based learning, lots of good books and outdoor exploration.
Here’s what we did:
Spring Pond Loose Parts Play
For this activity, I set out some kinetic sand along with mini pond animals, marbles, small stones and some leaves I pulled off a silk plant (because they need lilypads, of course!).
The boys played with this setup for days.
Life Cycle of a Frog
The boys colored this free printable while I read aloud from one of our favorite nature study books: Nature Anatomy. There are a couple of pages dedicated to frogs and toads.
If your kids are a bit older, you could also have them make a Venn diagram that illustrates the differences between frogs and toads. And if you have access to frog eggs or tadpoles, nothing beats seeing the life cycle play out in real life!
Pond Nature Walk
Nature study is somewhat limited unless you actually go outside and experience nature, right? Most of our ponds are still partly frozen, but we followed the recommendation of a friend and went to a sweet little neighborhood pond. There were geese, ducks and we looked for frog eggs but unfortunately didn’t find any (although we did find other cool pond creatures in the water).
The kids brought their nature journals and colored pencils, some buckets, nets, a good magnifying glass and we made a picnic lunch out of it.
And only one kid fell in the pond so I call that a success. 🙂
Pond Study Picture Books
**You can probably find most of these at your local library, but we try to add our favorites to the shelf, because ALWAYS more books!**
Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner (This book is really neat)
Pond by Jim LaMarche (A wonderful and beautiful story that left us all smiling)
Turtle Pond by James Gladstone
Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury by Arnold Lobel (My five year old loves these stories)
Seasons of the Freshwater Pond Biome by Shirley Duke
National Geographic Kids Tadpole to Frog
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