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Tadpoles

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Spring

Nature

At The Curiosity Approach we are inspired by NATURE instead of themes and topics We follow the seasons, It’s our responsibility as Early Years educators, to guard the natural space, lead by example and foster a child’s sense of curiosity and reverence. Ensuring a deep seated connectedness to the natural world. Raising Tadpoles comes with extreme responsibility & timely release of tadpoles is critical.  We therefore encourage anyone to observe Tadpoles in their natural environment. Nature knows best

http://www.amphibianark.org/.../Tadpole%20care%20sheet...

Finding a cluster of frog spawn during one of our Forest School sessions was an absolute treat, the children and practitioners were so lucky and excited to have discovered the spawn in its natural habitat. every few days the children went back to observe what was happening to the spawn,  observing their growth and changing into tadpoles. as the weeks and even months went on there were less and less tadpoles to spot but imagine the children joy to discover a froglet a few month's later. It sparked such curiosity, language and questions.

Allowing time to think consider and embed understanding. Remember the quote from John Dewey 

“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.”

So if you're lucky enough to have a pond or to stumble across some frog spawn, enjoy the moment in that moment, please consider leaving it in their natural environment. We know and completely understand the temptation to remove the spawn, place them into a tank and keep them to watch the life cycle close up, but the reality is they probably wont survive or will become a lot weaker than if growing in their natural space. We need to remember to respect the natural environment and teach this to our little ones.

You could...

  • Visit the frog spawn regularly with the children or even as a practitioner and record the process with photos or videos to take back to share with other children.
  • Look at book about the life cycle of frogs
  • Ask you parents.. do any of your families have a pond? Could they share the experience on tapestry or by emailing over photographs or videos to share with the children?

Tadpoles