Frog Lapbook

As part of our Raising Frogs Project, my daughter put together this lovely lapbook all about frogs. I found a free study unit and lapbook templates here on the Homeschool Share Website.

In addition to the unit study we also watched a DVD all about frogs as well as various documentary videos and clips  from Youtube.

When the lapbook opens out it reveals a collection of mini-books.

There are also a few little attachments on the reverse of the lapbook.

When the front page is opened it reveals a page of lily pad flaps containing facts all about frogs.

When the lily pad flap is folded down it reveals a question.

And underneath the question flap is the answer written in by Samira.

This is a mini book that the student completes in stages, first writing about what they already know about frogs. Then before starting the project, they write what they want to find out about frogs and finally at the end of the project they write what they have learned about frogs. I found this minibook on the Kid Zone website.

Next up are some cute little vocabulary cards which I hole-punched and strung together.

On each card is a word relating to frogs and Samira wrote the definition underneath.

Then there is the comparison mini book, looking at the differences between tadpoles and frogs.

Next up is the quartered flap book all about why frogs ‘sing’.

Samira wrote some of the reasons why frogs sing under the four flaps. Apparently frogs sing because they know when the weather is going to change, masha’Allah. We watched a couple of video clips on Youtube to see the different sounds different species make for different reasons – very interesting.

This is a Venn Diagram flap book looking at the differences and similarities between frogs and toads.

This is the list of similarities between frogs and toads:

Here are another collection of cards strung together, focusing on phonics, words ending with ‘og’.

This is quite simple for a 6 year old, but we included it anyway. Samira wrote down a few ‘og’ words and drew pictures to illustrate the words.

Below is a pocket containing sequence cards for the lifecycle of the frog. The little ones enjoyed putting them in order and telling a story about the life cycle.

Similarly, here is the life cycle on a pin wheel, using the same pictures. Samira cut them out and glued them down in the correct order.

This neat little pocket is to store news paper cuttings.

We didn’t find any stories relating to frogs in our newspapers, but after looking through the BBC website, we found quite alot of interesting recent stories about frogs that had been discovered and rediscovered. So I copied and pasted the stories Samira liked and we printed them out to put in the pocket.

Here is a little flap that opens out to show a diagram of a frog with various body parts labelled by Samira.

This neat little flap book helps children to understand the differences between ‘predator’ and ‘prey’.

I got Samira to write a definition of predator and prey under each of the flaps.

Then under the bottom flaps she drew pictures of animals (insects) that a frog hunts, and pictures of animals that prey on frogs.

These are another set of fact cards which I strung together. On each card Samira wrote one fact about frogs. We visited All About Frogs.org to find out some weird and wonderful facts about frogs.

Next is this lift the flap fact book looking at four of the frogs body parts.

Samira wrote some information under each of the flaps.

At the end of the project Samira chose a species of frogs to do a small report on. She chose the Red-eyed Tree Frog.

We found some nice information about this species here and here.

We found this nice diagram of a Red-eyed Tree Frog on the Enchanted Learning website.

The other pictures and maps included in this reported were selected randomly from Google images.

On the reverse of the lapbook is this great little ‘sticky tongue’ feature. The card tongue fits through the slit made in the frogs mouth and then little pictures of insects are cut out and glued onto the tongue.

Also on the back of the lapbook is a little folded up mini-book with the ’5 Little Speckled Frogs’ song alongside a pocket containg 5 frog puppets, coloured, cut-out and mounted on ice-lolly sticks.

Cute and Fun!

Raising Frogs – Week 5

Well, here we are at week 5, and we have our first froglets, masha’Allah. Many of the tadpoles started developing their back legs as early as 2 weeks ago, but for some reason many of them have died.

There are a few tadpoles who still haven’t grown any legs yet, so I thought it would be best if we separated the ones with backlegs and put them into a container with shallow water because they develop lungs and start breathing from the air around the same time that they start growing legs.

After separating them the tadpoles began to develop very quickly and their front legs appeared almost overnight! We now had our first froglets.

Sadly we also seem to have lost a few of the developing tadpoles in the tank with the froglets. It’s not clear but it seems the froglets have become cannibalistic and started feasting on the remaining developing tadpoles as well as eachother!

I’ve been out in the garden with the girls this afternoon to catch a range of insects for our one remaining  froglet, who we have put on his/her own into a large plastic container. He/she is just over 1cm in length.

 In the last 2-3 days his tail has shrunk right down to nothing more than a stump and he/she is leaping and bouncing around all over the place.

Insha’Allah we will be taking him home to Nanny and Grandad’s pond tomorrow, while we wait for the remaining few tadpoles to develop.

My daughter Samira has finished her Frog Lapbook, check it out insha’Allah, with links to lapbook templates and resources included.

Raising Frogs – Week 1

I mentioned recently how we had done a Raising Frogs Project back in Spring 2009 but that, unfortunately we had lost most of our pictures and video clips from our week by week diaries.

I decided we would do this project again, especially since Amina and Basma are that little bit older and understand more, masha’Allah.

A little later than planned, we collected our tadpoles from nanny and grandad’s pond today. It turns out that there were three huge clumps of spawn on the pond this year so the pond is filled to the brim with little wriggly tadpoles.

When we last did this project we took home a small clump of spawn as well as a few loose tadpoles, but since we have had such lovely warm, sunny weather the past few days, the tadpoles have eaten their way out of the spawn already, and at only 10 days old they are at least twice the size that they were in our first project!

Grandad collected up some tadpoles for us – about 40 altogether. I decided it would be best not to add gravel to the tank this time because last time it made it extremely difficult to clean the tank, trying to separate the tiny tadpoles from the tiny gravel! Instead I added in just 6 large rocks from the garden and as the tadpoles begin to develop legs and lungs, I will reduce the water level and they will serve nicely as little resting places above the water level.

Last time we fed our tadpoles on goldfish flakes and they grew very quickly, much quicker than they would have done in the wild and we are doing the same this time.

Samira is currently completing a larger lapbook project on Frogs, which you can view here and we shall be keeping a week by week project diary as well as completing worksheets and activities, so be sure to follow along with us insha’Allah.