Tadpoles and suicidal frogs

Back in May,

We went tadpole hunting.

it was muddy, fun , and very muddy.....

This is Janice.

She was the brave one.

She took her flip flops off and went tromping in the mud,

All for the fun of learning.

Way to go Jan.


The kids were so much fun to be with.

Aren't they cute?

They could all pass as siblings!


We went home and drew pictures of frogs,

practiced letters and forming words,

And scrapping papers together for our home school scrapbook.

Silas sounded out and spelled the word 'frog' without any help!

I was a proud mama hen.
Silas' frog is on the right,
Mine is on the left.

Then,
what seemed like months and months and MONTHS went by,
And appendages were forming:

This was exciting for me especially because I thought we chose the ONLY
defective tadpoles in the pond!
We kept feeding them lettuce chunks.
We would roll the lettuce in our hands until it was dark and wilty.
More months..........

We rented and read EVERY tadpole book and pond life DVD's we could he our hands on!

The library was a great recource

Actually our only recource

(Aside from the pond where we caught the little swimming friends!)

Weeks later, and after a little neglect (okay a lot!)

Some dead tadpoles.

We started out with five,

And ended up with one lonely soldier.
The poor guy continued the journey alone

From this, we learned that tadpoles will eat their friends when they're desperate!

The tail phase was especially exciting.

It happened so fast!

The tail grew and shriveled within a week!
We decided on a Friday that the following Satrurday,

We would set it free in the pond where we first caught the original 5 tadpoles.

We learned from the library books that

No matter how far a frog will travel,
It will always make its way back to the pond it hatched from
To lay its own eggs.
Amazing!

Friday came,

Our last lettuce rolling session before we let the little frog go

Free Willy.
No frog in sight.

The guy got jumping fever and took it too far.

We never did find it.

We were so close to the finish line,

And for months, I had the perfect blog post planned

from finish to end.......

Then my plans changed.

While I was disappointed,

I realized that such is life.

I actually thought about homeschooling for a while.

I thought about how much of my "plans" will change.

And how much I want to be open to the learning- even when the situation doesn't go as planned.

This was the first big project gone "awry".

I was still a little disappointed.

I really wanted to have pictures of the great release.

Then I realized

The kids were not NEAR as disappointed as I was.

They let is go

Like water off a ducks back.

And I knew I was making too much of a deal out of it.

Later that week we went to the river again,

much to our surprise,

We found a whole new bath of tadpoles.

These ones are different that the last ones.

They're all black.

I got smart and snagged some algae from the puddle they were in.

No more lettuce rolling

A No fuss do-over!

I love second chances!