Frog Life Cycle

The last animal species I taught to my son to finalise this chapter was Amphibians. I was babysitting my son's friend, so she joined the lesson with him. As we all love frogs I followed a brilliant idea of a craft of a frog life cycle on the DLTK website, which is one of my favorite websites for craft ideas -  http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mfroglifecycle.htm.

It is a simple, educational and fun activity and you just need paper plate, blue and green construction paper, aluminium foil, egg box cut to make just 4 eggs.

Instructions:

1 - To make the pod the kids used a paper plate and wrapped it with a blue construction paper. They glued the paper onto the plate and cut the edges to make it round.

2 - Afterwards they used foil and wrapped it around the paper plate to make it look like a pod.

3 - Then the kids made their own frog and tadpole with construction paper. They saw a model on the DKLT website and just attempted to copy by looking. It looked quite cute!!!

4 - Following, I printed the arrows template from the DKLT website, and asked them to write the directions of the frog life cycle on their blank arrows.

5 - To make the frog eggs we used an egg carton and painted with black marker on top.

6 - To put the items together, I read aloud the frog life cycle to them and they would stuck each item in order round the pond. 1 step: The eggs hatch into tadpoles; 2 step: The tadpoles grow into frogs; 3 step: the frogs lay eggs. I was really pleased with them because they would complete the cycle by themselves just by following what I was reading.

7 - Finally their frog life cycle was ready. My son had the carton egg, but his sweet friend wanted to make it using construction paper.

It was a very educational and easy activity. The children were able to read the life cycle based on what they wrote and listened to me explaining. They constantly repeating the cycle over and over again!! I was very happy with the result, it is one of those activities that makes one pleased  because the result is their understanding of the concepts in the lesson and very visible.

Fish

Last Friday I  taught the fish specie to my son. Instead of teaching him at home I choose to take him to visit the Shedd Aquarium - http://www.sheddaquarium.org. It was free admission at the aquarium last week, thus when we arrived, there was an immense queue. We waited for 2 hours in the line to get inside; the waiting was tiresome but as soon as we started explore, it was totally worth. We have been to most of the museums in Chicago, and the aquarium is on our top 5 list :)))))). I took many pictures but I selected the best ones, which I hope will demonstrate to you the beauty of this specie, and how much fun we had.

There are thousands of fish at the aquarium from all over the world: Amazon, Australia, Asia, central America, Africa, and so on. The following images exhibit spider crabs, octopus, crabs, lobsters, star fish, and many more.

                              

We also saw piranhas, lungfish, paddlefish, and others.

The seahorses are very cute!!!!! The otters are great swimmers!!!!!!

We saw an electric eel (black one) and discovered that it generates up to 600 volts of electricity, whereas the humans are less than 1 volt. There was also a moray ell (yellowish one).
Furthermore, we learnt that the catfish travel the entire Amazon following network, and the biggest ever catfish caught was on the Amazon river, and it was approximately 10 feet high.
Below, there is a picture of an orange fish and my son's hand touching the glass, this fish was an interesting one :))))). He thought we were feeding him, he would open his mouth and touch the glass every time we put our finger there. My son was mesmerise with the fish, he said it was like the fish wanted to talk to us.
As well as many other types of exotic fish, we saw many turtles too.

One of the reasons I wanted to go to the aquarium was to be able to see the jellyfish. I think they are one of the most divine, although deadly, creatures in the entire sea life. It was sheer bliss to observe them.

What made it more magical was the peaceful room selected for those who desired to watch them. There was classical music playing in the background, the lights were low and the people were quite. It was like everyone was hypnotised by the jellyfish. The way they move is like in slow motion, giving you the chance to analyse every tiny movement made by them. I hope the pictures I took can show you how wonderfully beautiful they are.

I love corals, they are so beautiful and colourful.

My son enjoyed the fiercely sharks very much, he was looking forward to seeing them the whole day. They are enormous and very scary indeed, however, fascinating. 

There were also many types of rays at the aquarium, which you can see on the images below.

We all love the clownfish, hence here is a dedicated special space just for them :))))).

Although it was an aquarium, there were also some reptiles such as the iguana, chameleon, green frogs, and blue frogs, which I had not seen other than in photos. As well as the terrifying anaconda!!! This snake was massive, we couldn't see her face, just the body, which was very large.

We found some insects too. There was a big cockroach, and various giant ants.

My son was very excited and eager to know everything about the fish. Throughout our visit he asked me many questions about the food they eat, the way they breath, the position of the eyes, and many more. To be honest with you, I was absolutely pleased with our trip to the aquarium, because my son discovered everything by himself. He was very curious and didn't stop one second asking me questions. He was also searching on the computers they have available at the aquarium to find out more about this category.

I greatly recommend parents/teachers to take the children to visit the museum if they are able. It is extremely educational, and if they have studied this subject matter in books already, it will reinforce even more what they have learnt.  It is an unforgettable experience, where they learn science, marine biology, respect for the animals and humans too.