We got together with a few of our homeschooling friends yesterday to hang out at a cool pond with a pretty nice beach and picnic area. It's a great spot because during the week it's not very crowded -- in fact, we pretty much had the place to ourselves which seems to often be the case there -- and it's free! The water is, well, sort of pond-like, but still quite swimmable, and the kids spent most of our time there playing and swimming with each other in the pond. Good day for it too, as it was quite hot and humid.
When everyone finally got sick of the water play, they moved ashore for some sand play -- sand castles, hole digging, and whatever other projects kids that age do on the beach. We adults pretty much left them to their own devices -- we were having our own fun visiting on our beach blankets, parked securely in the shade!
We had brought our new pond study dip nets along, hoping to find some tadpoles to study. We did! Along with damsefly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, water boatmen, and a variety of other tiny pond-dwelling creatures.
The boys and their friend check out the tadpoles we caught. We took home a handful of them, as did their friend -- I'll talk about our set-up for them in another post. Our plan is to let the frogs go as they develop, and already we're going to have to make a trip to a pond today to release a few tiny frogs (tree frogs, I believe, given that they are happily dwelling on the verticle side of the container I've got set up for them).
Here's a look at the bazillion tadpoles in our container. I think there's several species of frogs in there, and in all stages of development -- some are just the classic tapole, all head and tail, some have hind legs, some have hinds and fronts, and some are pretty darned close to frogs already (tiny froglets though they may be!). We took home a few at each life stage and released the rest back into the pond before we left.
We got together with a few of our homeschooling friends yesterday to hang out at a cool pond with a pretty nice beach and picnic area. It's a great spot because during the week it's not very crowded -- in fact, we pretty much had the place to ourselves which seems to often be the case there -- and it's free! The water is, well, sort of pond-like, but still quite swimmable, and the kids spent most of our time there playing and swimming with each other in the pond. Good day for it too, as it was quite hot and humid.
When everyone finally got sick of the water play, they moved ashore for some sand play -- sand castles, hole digging, and whatever other projects kids that age do on the beach. We adults pretty much left them to their own devices -- we were having our own fun visiting on our beach blankets, parked securely in the shade!
We had brought our new pond study dip nets along, hoping to find some tadpoles to study. We did! Along with damsefly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, water boatmen, and a variety of other tiny pond-dwelling creatures.
The boys and their friend check out the tadpoles we caught. We took home a handful of them, as did their friend -- I'll talk about our set-up for them in another post. Our plan is to let the frogs go as they develop, and already we're going to have to make a trip to a pond today to release a few tiny frogs (tree frogs, I believe, given that they are happily dwelling on the verticle side of the container I've got set up for them).
Here's a look at the bazillion tadpoles in our container. I think there's several species of frogs in there, and in all stages of development -- some are just the classic tapole, all head and tail, some have hind legs, some have hinds and fronts, and some are pretty darned close to frogs already (tiny froglets though they may be!). We took home a few at each life stage and released the rest back into the pond before we left.
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