Frog Week

I am excited to dive into frogs next week. How about you?

Here's a graphic we made to get us ready for the week. 

The animal in the middle is the red eyed tree frog. Learn more about this creature from National Geographic Kids. Here's a link.

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/facts/red-eyed-tree-frog

Origami Frog

Let's jump into this week by making an origami jumping frog!

Here is a link to a video with directions: 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMPvpaTIOGV/?igsh=MmpycG1kcm5hYWVn

Life Cycle and Play Doh

Let's review the life cycle of frogs and make Play-Doh models of each stage. I think the tadpole is the cutest! How about you?

Here are a couple of photos to get your attention:

Here is a link to the activity.

https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/96589/overview

Habitat

What makes a good habitat for a frog?

Let's build a habitat where frogs (and their cousins the toads!) can thrive.

Here's a great resource from Alabama Wildlife.

https://alabamawildlife.org/learning-station-frog-toad-habitat/

(Photo of a sideways terra cotta flower pot in pebbles is from their website)

Do you live in a place without space for an outdoor pond? Perhaps you want a terrarium to keep your tadpole and frog friends safe as you watch their development indoors. Here's an affiliate link to a nice and inexpensive terrarium kit that will meet your needs. 

https://amzn.to/3UXPgUU

Family Tree 

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How are Frogs, Toads, and Salamanders related? What about Caecilians?

Let's learn more about their family tree at amphibia web!

https://amphibiaweb.org/taxonomy/AW_FamilyPhylogeny.html

Here's a screenshot from their website

Our Impact

This is something to think about

What happens to amphibian populations as humans encroach on their territory?

Let's check out this great Biogeography lesson. This is intended for high schoolers and beyond, but the concepts can be applied when teaching any age. Here's a link to the PDF. 

https://amphibiaweb.org/education/LP_IslandBiogeography.pdf

Here's a graph from the activity.

Frogs in Space

Of course we love relating all of our lessons to space.

Here's a picture of the CEMIOS mission patch.

One giant leap...

Why, yes! Frogs have been to Space a few times.

Do you want to read about the full history of frogs in space? Here's a great piece!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/sep/17/frogs-in-space-one-giant-leap

Here's a snippet from that article, which points out something very interesting when frogs go weightless:

"One of the things that Mir researchers discovered was that the frogs' ability to change their body colour to mimic the colour of the surface they were sitting on was delayed or absent due to the microgravity environment. Their responses to other sorts of stimuli were generally intact as long as they maintained stable contact with a surface. Once the frogs lost contact and began floating in the zero-G space station, they lost their ability to co-ordinate their movements and to orient themselves properly."

And for all the details about an experiment that sent frog eggs up on sounding rockets, here is a link to learn all about CEMIOS. http://simon.wueest.name/cemios/

What do you love about frogs?