Water week at Frog Song was very exciting… We learned SO much!

In the beginning of the week we learned about different bodies of water, including oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, waterfalls, etc. The children got to make books where they colored a picture of a particular body of water and then cut out and glued the definition below it.

We spent a morning learning about the water cycle with reading the book, “Water is Water” by Miranda Paul. Some children went on to do tea making and noticed how some of the water disappears through the process of evaporation. This day was particularly hot so we went down to our ravine to have a picnic lunch in the shade.

Little to our surprise we made it down to our pond after lunch and it had shrunk! What a concrete, sensorial experience of the water cycle and the effects of hot climate on water!

We then went on to learn about oceans specifically. We learned that the ocean is salt water and makes up most of the earth! We learned about different kinds of animals that live in the ocean and played memory games with them…

We also made ocean collages with sharks, fish, sea stars and kelp!

We also practiced writing letters in salt rocks…

…and tried moving like crabs!

We then went on to learn about ponds. We focused on four different insects we could look for and explore at our pond when it was time to go outside; pond gliders, dragonflies, tadpoles and frogs. We were able to find all four at our pond! We learned about the frog life cycle and some children noticed that some tadpoles had to come to the surface to get breathes of air, which meant that they had started to grow lungs and needed air to breathe, just like us!

Other pond activities included frog bingo…

…and a book called Jo MacDonald, Old MacDonalds daughter, where we got to sing about different animals she finds at a pond to the tune of Old MacDonald!

During water week the children also got to explore weight in water through a sink and float activity…

…and how important water is to our plants when it gets hot out!

Next week we get ready to learn about dirt and rocks!!

On the first day of bug camp we learned about earth worms! Activities included making worms out of clay…

Collage…

And trying to move around like a worm!

We then fed our turtle worms and discovered that worms are way better at moving like worms 🙂

On day two we learned about ants, including how ants live in colonies and each ant has a role or job to do. We did “The Ants Go Marching,” and went outside to find ants and their colonies! Some children made books of the parts of an ant…

On day three we learned about grasshoppers! Children were blown away that grasshoppers breathe through tiny holes in their stomachs called spiracles!

In our adventure down to the pond to find grasshoppers we stumbled upon little frogs on a log! They quickly jumped into the pond or slid into the cracks in the log to hide…

On Thursday we learned about lady bugs. We learned all about the lady bug life cycle, and then were able to find many of the stages out on our playground, including a larva and a very young lady bug whose shell was still yellow!

On the last day of bug camp we learned about… Butterflies! Many children were already experts on the butterfly life cycle. We also played butterfly memory games and made butterfly collages!

All week we sang “The Insect Song.” This prompted the children to find bugs outside and try to correctly identify if they were an insect or not!

It goes like this:

What makes an insect
I think I know
It has 3 body parts
Here we go!

Head, thorax, abdomen
And now let’s count the legs and hands
123-456
And now let’s see what else there is

I see antennae
And two eyes
Some of them have wings
To help them fly

Here is a link if you’d like to learn how to sing it: https://vimeo.com/12053307

Get ready for next week where we will learn all about Water!

Thank you to the whole Frog Song Community for making our second year full of growth! We will miss all of the children moving on to new classrooms and look forward to the young ones becoming the leaders of the classroom next year!

Our property, being open to the public, has been a great place for our children to connect with the greater community. We often run into people from the neighborhood walking their dogs or building bridges in the ravine, some of whom the children know by name now. Recently we discovered something beautiful that children from the neighborhood had built at our pond!