Learning about Frog Life Cycles with A Frog in the Bog

 Learning about Frog Life Cycles with A Frog in the Bog by Karma Wilson

We are big Karma Wilson book fans over here. We love the repetition and rhyme as well as the pictures. This one was great because we were able to tie in learning about biomes and life cycles in science while reading as well as practice our number words.

See the read aloud here.

Here are some printables I created for us to work with.

We also watched some videos about the tadpole's life cycle into a frog and learned about where frogs live.

Trials of a Tadpole video

I found a song called The Frog in the Bog. It's a little tricky for preschoolers, but it's fun when a puppet is included. 

Read another post about Karma Wilson books here.

Read more animal life cycle posts here.

The Butterfly

In preparation for our butterfly study, we read Patricia Polacco's The Butterfly. It's an account of the Holcaust from the point of view of a child - Patricia's great-aunt Monique - in France as she helps Jews escape and hide. Monique becomes friends with a girl named Severine, who is hiding in her cellar with her family. The butterfly in the story symbolizes freedom, as the girls pray that Severine and her parents may one day return to their normal lives. Eventually, Severine must leave Monique's home as their cover has been blown. She loses her parents to a Nazi concentration camp, but survives and reunites with her long lost friend.

Here is a clip from a play that was adapted from the book:

We watched this YouTube Monarch Butterfly video

as well as this time lapse video of a butterfly emerging from its crysalis.

We created these cute butterfly life cycle plates that I started making with my class years ago. (This pic is from Somewhat Simple though. Click the pic to see how to make them!

We also created symmetric butterflies.

Butterfly Quiz

Chick It Out!

"Eggsactly" what is going inside there?

Have you ever wondered what a chick looks like inside an egg on each day of its 21 day incubation period? We used chickscope to check out real pictures inside fertilized chicken eggs and MRI (magnetic resonance images) from the outside. It's amazing!

     

We have just finished up a chicken life cycle unit in first grade. Out of 15 eggs, 4 hatched. It was interesting to see that even adults were surprised when they realized that not all chicks are yellow. In fact, none of ours were! We had one tan chick, two black chicks, and one grey chick. They were a hit at our Healthy Children Healthy Planet  event, as were the three grown hens we borrowed from our Garden Resident.

The NJ Core Curriculum Science Standards are easily met by our animal and plant studies. We plant different species of vegetables in our school garden (the largest public school garden in the state of NJ) and observe them from seeds to flowering plants.

• 5.3.P.D.1 requires students to use observations of change in animal appearance over time in a life cycle.
• 5.3.2.D.1 requires students to compare offspring with their parents.
• 5.3.2.D.2 requires students to recognize that many species of the same animal exist.

Our kindergarteners learn about the life cycle and species of a frog, while second graders learn about the life cycle of a butterfly. By the end of second grade, they can classify animals easily into birds, amphibians, insects, mammals, and reptiles. I often use this game as an informal assessment. It's SmartBoard / Promethean Board friendly too!  If you really want to challenge your students, use a triple Venn diagram. I give students 3 pictures of animals in the class (lion, tiger, bear = mammal; ant, bee, butterfly = insect, etc.) and this makes them prove how they know they belong to that class, or if they didn't already know, they discover it!

Here is an awesome chick contraction game to play!

For more student websites, teacher resources, and lesson plans / worksheets on this topic, visit my website: https://sites.google.com/site/missabsc/home

Chicken Fest!

For ideas on a Chicken Fest, check out the LessonPlansSOS blog!