This week we did a little homeschooling with our friends from Pajamas in the Afternoon. Our theme for this week was Frogs. We did a few hands on activities and started a craft. Today I think we really had the most fun with crayfish and Frog hunting.

Monday

The first thing we did for out theme was make Cup Cake Frogs.  Pajamas in the Afternoon had these green yummy cupcakes all baked for us and ready to be decorated. The kids really went to town on decorating. We just let them go nuts at decorating them how they wanted to. I think we ended up with a unifrog and a troll frog. It was really easy to do as food coloring was used in both the frosting and the cupcakes. We used plastic bags with frosting in to do the eyes. We also used chocolate chips for eyeballs and mouth. We probably could have used some yellow licorice for a tongue. That would have looked cool!

We tried to visit our Wild Life Sanctuary to look for frogs but we were sadly disappointed as the pond we were directed to was nothing but algae covered. You couldn’t even really see the water. We tried to look on the edges of the pond to see if we could find any frogs but it was pretty much a no go. We did try to go over to the other pond. There was a little less algae on the other pond…the ducks and geese were by the pond and we saw no frogs. We did see a few turkeys which we normally don’t see them. So we decided to go and grab some dinner.

After dinner we started our craft. We painted some paper plates green but we had to let them dry. So we decided that we were going to do a little STEM. The legos were brought out and dumped and we had to look for all the pieces so all the kids could do a frog. We used a youtube video that guided us on how to put the pieces together to make a frog. The kids really had fun with it. No frog looked a like they all looked different. As they had different colors. By the time we finished it was getting late and we headed home. I forgot the kids did get to learn about the different parts of a frog. I don’t remember the website for it. They clicked on it and the piece of the frog would be put into the belly of the frog and their was a description. I thought that was pretty cool!

Friday

Today we headed out to 1000 Islands Nature Center. We borrowed nets and buckets and we headed down to the Fox River and started Crayfish and Frog hunting. The areas that we were in were very shallow. There were many little falls. It actually looked really pretty. The kids had fun searching for the crayfish. Many different sizes were found. The kids really enjoyed them. It was cute watching them say goodbye as they let each one go. We didn’t see any frogs while we were looking in the river. I think I heard they did find a turtle. I know that one caught two little minnows.

After the kids let the crayfish go we headed to the trails to walk and look for frogs. I think at one point the kids did see a frog under the bridge. Not totally sure. We really did enjoy the walk. There were many things to see. I noticed an area of natural foam by a rock. One our way back the foam looked like a fuzzy iceberg floating down the river. I also noticed some really bright yellow mushrooms….as I call them FUNGUS!! They almost looked like cheddar cheese. We didn’t walk the trails for a long time but we did take a nice walk. Next time we go back we will walk more of the trails. We just walked on what they call the board walk.

After we finished our walk we headed back to the picnic tables to do some nature journaling. I told my daughter that she had to draw one thing from today. She also had to write one sentence about what we did. She also had to draw what the sky looked like and record the temperature and date. Today it was mostly cloudy until we were about to leave and then the sun was starting to peek out. It was a perfect day as it wasn’t really hot and you could really enjoy it. The temperature was 72 degrees.

I did take pictures so that my daughter and I can go back later and look things up that we don’t know. For example the kind of crayfish they caught, the type of fungus we saw, and why is their foam on the river. So we can continue our learning experience.

The only thing we didn’t complete was our frog craft and I believe that we are finishing that on Monday. Our next theme is the Solar Eclipse

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