From Tadpoles to Frogs

We love learning by doing!

A few months ago one of our teachers, Teacher Leonard, found some tadpoles when he was collecting some water. During animal month we had learnt about frogs and the frog life cycle so we knew that tadpoles grow into frogs. We really wanted to see it happen!

We cut the lid off an old plastic drink bottle and put the tadpoles in it for the night.

We were all really excited to raise the tadpoles but we didn't know exactly what to do. So, we asked our friends on Facebook what they thought we should do. We also researched using some books we had in the classroom.

One of the questions we asked our Facebook friends.

What they eat
We discovered that tadpoles can eat cooked spinach and uncooked capsicum. This was perfect because we often have spinach and capsicum for lunch. Athumani and Adam were very responsible and collected the food a couple of times a week.

A new home for the tadpoles
We also made a bigger home for our tadpoles by cutting a 12 litre water bottle in half. We collected some algae and leaves from a pond to put it. We also collected rainwater when it rained because we didn't want our tadpoles to have water with chemicals in it.

Sabra and Mariam check on the tadpoles in their new home.

First the tadpoles grew back legs, then front legs and then their tail started to shorten. It happened just the way we had read!

This life cycle poster shows how a tadpole grows to a frog. We stuck it up right next to the tank.

When the tadpoles became froglets we decided we needed to put some rocks in the tank for them to rest on. Tadpoles breath in the water using gills. Froglets and frogs breath air using lungs. That's why it was really important to put in some rocks for them to sit on.

When the tadpoles had grown into frogs we decided to let them go back into the wild. We hope they are doing well. We are going to collect some more tadpoles and start again!

Questions:
1. Who collected the food for the tadpoles?
2. Today you have learnt about the life cycle of a frog. Research the life cycle of another animal and present what you find to your class.
3. What would have happened if there had been no rock for the froglets and frogs to rest on?
4. Have you ever raised an animal from a baby to an adult. Write about your experience.