Exploring Tadpoles Turning Into Frogs

This week the children have been having a great time watching the creatures change in our pond. Today they captured all of the different phases going on and had them all in one bucket!

Here is a tadpole, (or polliwog depending on where you are)starting to grow it’s legs:




I read that they hatch out as a tadpole and remain in that form until the following season. Then they start growing legs in their transformation to frog, and the other frog characteristics come on gradually.

The tail is the last thing the tadpole looses on its journey to becoming a frog. I don’t remember ever seeing a frog with a tadpole tail, so I was amazed at this next picture myself! Here are a couple of the frog before it lost its tadpole tail:





And we all know what a frog looks like, but I had to put up a picture of one to make this post complete. Here is a finished frog with a tail-frog in the background:




And some day these little guys will be peaking out at us, daring us to try to catch them, like this frog:




God gives us all kinds of science lessons right in our own pond! This is what I call "home schooling through the summer"!