Rainforests: Poison Frogs

We are currently enjoying a unit study on Rainforests! We are making our way through the layers of the rainforest week by week. This week we are studying the canopy. Today we focused on poison frogs! Keep scrolling to learn more about what we did.

Huge shout out to Experience Early Learning for this month’s curriculum which I have received in return for honest and authentic stories resulting from my daily experiences. I am excited and honored to share how we use this curriculum to meet the different learning needs in my home.

If you are looking for a gentle, video based way to start off your school day, check out this WildKratts episode “The Great Froggyback Ride” on the poison dart frog (you can also find it on amazon prime):

https://www.vudu.com/content/movies/details/Wild-Kratts-The-Great-Froggyback-Ride/1502154

Or this YouTube video:

Or you can read (or watch) this read aloud:

After learning a bit about the Poison (Dart) Frog, I set up a game to help us learn about their life cycles. I found this GREAT game: Poison Dart Frog Game – Ellen McHenry’s Basement Workshop (ellenjmchenry.com) The goal of the game was to be the first frog to lay your eggs, and carry your tadpoles up to the bromeliad plants at the top of the tree. Not only did we learn about the frog life cycle, we also learned about their predators and how their poison is made! This was a fantastic game that I made by cutting a part a diaper box!

For writing, I made a “poison” for them to write in by mixing lemon juice with cornstarch (and adding a bit of sugar). It was like a thick lemonade.

For literacy, I made a pretend tree branch path by using green painters tape and wrote a word (for my oldest) and a letter (for my youngest) on each “branch”. I gave them each 3 paper cut outs of tadpoles to put on their backs and “carry” up the tree. I put a bucket (which we pretended was a bromeliad plant) at the top of the “tree” for them to place their tadpoles in. They had to say the word/letter on the branch before hopping to the next.

That was it for today! We love all of the learning journeys Experience Early Learning has taken us on. We are so thankful for this wonderful curriculum! If you want to read more about what we have done during our unit click here . If you are interested in learning more about Experience Early Learning thematic units, click here.