And to make things even more exciting for him, he caught his first Pickerel Frog at our nature club meeting last week. Oh boy, can you see the excitement on his face?

Green Frogs and Bullfrogs have been his prized catches for the last years, but a Pickerel Frog he has never caught, until now. Everyone at the club was so excited to see this neat looking frog.

At first my son proclaimed it to be a Northern Leopard Frog, but once he got home and began looking up the pictures of frogs in our area he soon found out that a Pickerel Frog looks very much like a Leopard Frog save one main difference: their spots are rectangular-shaped (usually in two parallel rows down their backs) versus oval-shaped like on Leopard Frogs. So he quickly relabeled our newest aquarium addition as a Pickerel Frog. He made this comparison observation all on his own and I simply looked over his findings and verified that he had indeed relabeled our new froggie correctly! Nature study is SO GREAT for teaching observation and research skills.

Can you see the rectangular shaped spots in the photo below? Also notice that the tympanum (eardrum) is about the size of the eye or smaller which is what tells us it’s a female.

My son keeps an aquarium in which he uses to temporarily house his beloved pets. It currently has three frogs in it, the Pickerel and two Green Frogs. He only keeps them for a few days to a week. We feed them crickets which we either catch or buy at the pet store. All the frogs are hiding in this picture under the rocks.

During the time that we keep the frogs we use several activities from the Frogs and Toads unit study to continue to learn more and more about these amazing amphibians! We have done many things from measuring their jumps to collecting their eggs and hatching and raising the tadpoles, and SO much more! Check out the Frogs and Toads unit this spring and summer to launch your own journey into the fascinating world of frogs and toads!

Metamorphosis is nothing short of a miracle in God’s creation. It is one thing to read about it, but to actually experience a creature changing shape and function before your very eyes is breathtaking, and leaves you awestruck. In our Frogs and Toads unit we recommend that, if at all possible, you collect or purchase frog or toad tapoles to observe the metamorphosis process. Doing this not only gives you and your children priceless hands-on learning experience, but also it gives you a valuable faith teaching opportunity. For as the frog/toad changes into a completely new physical creation, we change into a new spiritual creation when we accept Christ as our Saviour. This lesson can provide for a beautiful discussion with your children in regards to comparing the ways the creature changes versus the ways we change. And again, always referencing how God put these beautiful lessons in His creation for us to learn from, and to know that it is Him who did this (Job 12:7-9, Romans 1:20).

This spring and summer our family has been blessed to have two opportunities to do just that. Earlier in the spring we caught and raised about 20 tiny toad tadpoles; and just recently set the little baby toads free. And now recently my son has caught three frog tadpoles. We are unsure yet what kind of frogs they are; we are guessing they are two Green Frogs and one Bullfrog. Raising the frog tadpoles has been even more beneficial than the toad tadpoles. They are SO much larger and you can really visually observe the changes. The really cool thing is that two of them are still in the tadpole stage (typically frogs take a lot longer than toads to change), but one of them we’ve been able to watch slowly grow into a baby frog!! When we first caught it, it already had back legs. And just a couple of days ago little front legs popped out overnight! Now it is slowly absorbing it’s tail. It is also coming up more and more on the rocks and breathing with it’s newly formed lungs! Here are a few photos from our experiences.

With Back Legs Only

With Front Legs, Developing Frog Body Form

Absorbing Tail

Other Two Frog Tadpoles

Frog Tadpole Habitat

I just had to throw this last photo in here of my 3 year old who is very much unsure of holding this very large Green Frog my son also recently caught.

"That's a big froggy Mama," says Gabby.

~Melissa

Congratulations to Robin, the winner of our giveaway from the CHEK Convention!!  Thank you to all who stopped by our booth this weekend.  It was so nice meeting you all!  We look forward to hearing from all of our new (and old) friends about their experiences with the NaturExplorer units!

I’ve also made up a free notebooking page to go along with this lesson that you can download by clicking the link below.

Comparing Human and Frog Respiration Notebooking Page

Misty, the Green Frog

Observing Misty in a Bucket Full of Creek Water

Today, using an activity from the Frogs and Toads unit, we decided to do some measuring to determine just how far Misty could jump!

Measuring Jumps (Keeping a Bucket of Creek Water to Rehydrate Misty)

Measuring Misty's Jumps - She can jump up to 12 1/2"!

Misty was quite cooperative for our studies. If she got too energetic we simply placed her on her back and she became as calm as can be (this being another suggested activity from the Frogs and Toads unit).

Misty is Completely Calm

We have recorded down the lengths of each of Misty’s jumps into our nature notebooks. We have plans to capture an American Toad sometime this week to compare hop lengths with the Misty. Something tells me Misty will win. What do you think?