Froggies and Butterflies

We completed our unit study with the observation of real, live tadpolies! Yes! God's timing is so great. At church, one of my fellow homeschoolers was handed a mysterious parcel covered in a plastic bag. So I inquired of its contents and what do you think it was? Okay, okay -- I'm sure you've already guessed -- tadpolies! I was so excited! What a perfect complement to our study! So, without much badgering, I was able to acquire some tadpolies of my own. In fact, I acquired quite a few. More than I needed. And you know what I found out? Tadpolies need lots of care. More than my own dog. The water declorinating and changing, the feeding which included blood worm defrosting (okay??), setting up their home and weeding them out as they developed. Okay, I killed a few. That was the hardest part. I hated flinging them over our back fence. So dishonoring. But, I got over it and pressed on. It was so exciting to see them develop their back legs, then their front legs and watch their tail shorten. Just like the pictures in books! And just like the girls had drawn in their frog cycle. It was so cool to see it in action.

But we found out that as soon as they developed their little front legs, they were eager to escape the confines of their bowl. We learned that they were some type of tree frog. They would stick to the sides of their bowl like glue and we could see how their little feet were not webbed but fingerlike with the little knobbies at the end. And they were SO little! And cute!

However, the time did come when we had to let them go. They were actually escaping from their habitat - one that was specifically made for developing tadpoles and frogs. They were so small that they could escape between the slats in the container that served as air holes. We would find them on the counter all the time. So we took some of them out to one of our local water sources, called the Lagoon and featured earlier on this blog, and we let them go. I was actually a little sad. They looked so little and helpless out there with all the ducks, geese, lizards and other predators around. At that point we still had about 10 left between the ones I had in another habitat and those still developing. At least that's what I thought. I counted them every day and it seemed like there were less of them. A few of those darn little critters had escaped and met their demise on the counter, all dried up. Oh, it was a sad sight! So after about a week or two, we took the rest of them and let them go at one of our parks with a large creek. Still so small. I'd rather not know what ultimately happened to them. And what am I going to do with all those frozen blood worms in my freezer? My son, Tyler, grossed out when he came upon them. You know they are mosquito larvae? Ewww!! Anybody need some?

Right now you may be asking, what do butterflies have to do with this post? Well, in the midst of the tadpole rearing, my mom ordered us some caterpillars. Those were a neat sideshow to the tadpoles. They only took about 2 weeks from the time we got them to the time that they turned into a butterfly. I had never seen the process before and it was pretty interesting. The butterflies were beautiful.

We let them go shortly after they metamorphosed because I couldn't bear to see them flap around the little butterfly habitat. The little balls that they are sitting on are paper towels soaked in sugar water, but how can that compare to their instinctive craving for nectar?

So our school year culminated with "changes", tadpoles to frogs and caterpillars to butterflies. Oh, and let's not forget -- a first grader to a second grader and a third grader to a fourth grader.

I couldn't be more proud!