Fill the Room With LIFE!
Adopt easy daycare container pets. Live turtles are easy to care for. All they need is an aquarium, a filter, and a few goldfish dropped in every week or so. No need to even have someone take care of them when you go on vacation. Sometimes families get tired of caring for their pets so they surrender them to their neighborhood pet store. I adopted such a turtle for a mere $5 donation to an animal charity. To purchase a red-eared slider is about $25. They live for years so it's not a bad investment either. You may even know of someone ready to re-home a turtle. They may be willing to give you the entire habitat with it! Post on social media. You may get a bite.
Interesting little fact: Turtles eat their own poo. I wondered why the aquarium floor was never dirty so I Googled it. You can't teach a dog to do that!
Go out in the yard and take a look. You may have one of these little cuties out there. They are often offered for sale by the local pet store too. Very easy to maintain, all these little tree frogs need is an endless supply of frogs and a pool of water.
Interesting little fact: Frogs drink through their skin. Each time one grabs a cricket, he jumps into the pool to drink.
No doubt you have a few (hundred) of these critters right out the back door, maybe under a flower pot. This is a roly-poly farm I purchase on Amazon. I was looking for ant farm and ran across this. It's easy to make. Take a shallow plastic dish, this one is about 8' by 7". Fill the bottom with soil about 5mm deep. Wet well but not to soaking. Add chia, yes, the same as the "Chia Pet". let the chia grow to about an inch. Capture (or order) roly-polies from the backyard and add them to your little farm. Remember to add chia every week as the rolies will be cultivating it and it will need to be replaced continuously. The chia needs to be sprayed moist each day so they are a little more needy as far as pets go but you really only have to keep them the duration of your theme then release them back into the yard. We added snails and a couple of worms just for kicks and giggles.
Interesting little fact: Roly-Polies breathe through gills thus the need for constant moisture.
Don't forget to ask Alexa to open Ambient sounds and play "pond sounds".
Brand new to Tender Loving Childcare (that's us) are a pair or African Dwarf Frogs given to us by one of our own families just in time for pond month!
Interesting little fact: Though African Dwarf Frogs spend all their lives in water, can't live in water deeper than 12" or they will drown.
Interesting little fact: Though African Dwarf Frogs spend all their lives in water, can't live in water deeper than 12" or they will drown.
VIEW on YouTube.
Word Wall
Books
A Pond So Blue by Dan Waters
A Tadpole Grows Up by Melvin and Gilda Berger
Frog on a Log by Kes Gray and Jim Field
or VIEW
Frog on the Log by Leyland Perree
All Eyes on the Pond by Michael Rosen
Turtles by Melvin and Gilda Berger
Have You Seen My Duckling by Nancy Tafuri
or VIEW
Good Morning Pond by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Curious George Tadpole Trouble adapted by Mark London Williams
Frogs Live on Logs by Melvin and Gilda Berger
The Great Smoky Mountain Salamander Ball by Lisa Norstman
Diego Saves the Tree Frogs adapted by Sarah Willson
or VIEW
Fantastic Frogs by Fay Robinson
The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer
or VIEW
Down by the Cool of the Pool by Tony Mitton
or VIEW
Waddle, Waddle, Quack, Quack, Quack by Barbara Anne Skalak
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Interactive Felt Board
To go with the book Good Morning Pond.
Mini Felt Boards
To go with the book A Tadpole Grows Up.
To go with the book/song Five Green and Speckled Frogs.
To go with Five Little Ducks.
To go with All Eyes on the Pond. I copied the title page and cut each piece out and laminated it. The children use the mini felt board to retell the story or to interact with while I read.
Song and Music
Videos Worth Watching
Activities
Froggy tiddly winks found at the Dollar Tree. The purple pool came with the smaller set. The green pool is a sand toy piece either from Dollar Tree also but sold separately.
An old favorite fishing game.
Pond scum (green slime) sensory bin. Start with slime. I purchased this in powder form and it was meant to fill a bathtub. This stuff is so slippery it's hard to wash off. I wont make it again but it sure is fun for now. Add plastic frogs, lizards, snakes, alligators, whatever and let the littles be slimed!
Busy hands make water lilies with paper plates, finger paint, tissue paper, and a pipe cleaner.
Dragonflies! Made with paint sample cards. The ones I found were short and wide so I cut them in half and stapled them together end to end. Lots of fun!
All you need is paint cards, googly eyes, glitter, cupcake papers, , scissors, staples, and glue.
Start with flattened cupcake papers. Cut a slit half way across like bologna when you fry it. Smear it with glue stick then add glitter. I let the Littles choose between blue, teal, and silver glitter. Then add glitter.
I cut a little to round the heads of the dragonflies. the website I found this idea on did not and they look just as cute.
Make them fly!
Cattail bouquet made of sticks with 3" strips of felt rolled up and glued. I added some skinny strips of green construction paper in the vase for leaves.
Mini pond life felt boards on paper plates. I helped the children position felt on their plates, they colored pictures of pond animals, and I laminated them and put Velcro on the backs so they can go home and talk about their ponds to their families.
Water Play
A pond theme is a good excuse for water play, games like "Sink or Float" or just working the water wheel is fascinating to preschoolers. They'll do this all morning!
