Since we’ve been away our little tadpoles have been very busy growing in size. They are turning into froglets. They have been growing some legs; first the back legs, and now the front ones are sprouting out as well.
There don’t seem to be so many of them, but when they see your shadow approaching, they do tend to hide among the leaves in the bottom of the fountain. Of course, I’m sure that nature is also taking it’s course with predators of the bird and feline variety despite the wire cover over the bowl.
We have taken another walk up to visit the ‘home pond’ of these little swimmers to see how the rest of the froglet clan is doing.
It’s interesting to note that the froglets we’ve been raising since the egg stage are much more advanced than their cousins in the larger pond! My theory is that having a few on the window sill in the sun and warmth before our trip to Canada ‘fooled’ them a bit as to the time of year.
We took one of ‘ours’ with us for comparison and you can see the difference.
I wonder how long it will take for the legs to grow and the tails to shrink and our little amphibian friends to hop away to a summer of fun? I’m sure it won’t be too long now.
We also took this opportunity for Tristan to work on his balance by walking across the cow gates. He was anxious the first time across, but as you can see, by the fifth crossing he was gaining in confidence and agility.
Please follow our frog life-cycle learning with our series:
- Frog life-cycle 1 – Frog Eggs
- Frog life-cycle 2 – Emergence of the Tadpoles
- Frog life-cycle 4 – Froggie Freedom
Hop on over to our Spring ideas page or our nature activities for kids page for more fun and inspiration.
Carolyn Wilhelm says
This is such a good life long lesson and memory for your family. Thank you for inspiring us to take notice of tadpoles and frogs! Carolyn
crystalmcclean says
It’s been fun for us, too, I’d never seen frog’s eggs before. I didn’t think they’d take this long to transform! We will do it again in the future and take a more ‘scientific’ approach, measuring the length of the tadpoles along the way, I think. There’s always something more to learn, isnt’ there?