Frogspawn Hunting!!!

This year's Spring project is FROGS!!!

We have decided to go get some frogspawn to watch them metamorphosis. We headed to our local Nature Reserve to find some!

We spent some time on the decked area first looking into the water for what we could see. Unfortunately it's still a little early in the year yet so we couldn't see much. This big pond snail was about all we could see!

'E' and 'W' both had a turn holding it. I asked 'W' what he though it was. I said about the hard shell and squishy body inside, "I'm sure you can think of an animal like that!" 

"It's like a snail" he said "but why it is in the water?"

"Because it's a pond snail, it lives in water. Not like our garden snails, they would drown"

Then we got to the main business of fishing out some frogspawn. 'W' wanted to have a go at scooping it out. He had to hold on to Georgia's hand to make sure he didn't fall in!!

It was quite hard to scoop up as it was all stuck together in big clumps but he managed to get some pond water which we needed too for the frogspawn to live in.

Once we got some in a pot, enough for us, Pippa and our local preschool we had a really good look. 'W' and 'E' put their fingers in it and we spoke about how it felt a bit like jelly maybe. We had to be quite gentle and not poke it too much as we didn't want to hurt any of the frogs.

We had another look at where the frogspawn was living, in the middle of some rushes where the water wasn't very deep.

As we decided to start heading home we came across a wormy worm! 'E' was very interested as it started moving across my hand and round onto the back, it was lifting up it's head and seemed to be 'looking' around.

'E' was feeling brave and gave the worm a stroke, she didn't want to hold it though. 'W' had a good look but didn't want to touch or hold it telling me it was "yucky"

As we continued on our way to the car 'W' started asking about the baby frogs and what would happen to them. "They are going to miss their mummies" he was saying and I explained that frog babies don't stay with their mummies, they look after themselves. He didn't seem entirely convinced with the explanation but we will be spending lots of time over the Spring watching our frogs develop, reading books and learning about them so 'W' will understand soon.