Lessons in Unschooling: The Life Cycle of a Frog

As any unschooling parent knows, all lessons that are worth learning are fun to learn. Children especially love caring for and learning about animals. If your kids like animals as well, try setting up a fun unschooling activity to learn about the life cycle of a frog from pollywog to adult stage.

Begin by getting your kids interested. Take a trip to your local pond, creek, or other waterway where you know that frogs live and frog eggs can be located. Most frogs lay eggs during the late autumn and the early spring, more commonly in spring, so keep your eyes open for eggs until the frogs begin to spawn.

Show children how to gently collect eggs by lifting them into a jar. Remember that you will not need very many frog eggs. You will have to hatch them all and you do not want your frog aquarium to be overpopulated. Ten eggs is more than enough to ensure a good number of tadpoles.

Once you get your frog eggs home, they will need to be placed into a container to hatch. Glass containers such as clear vases, pitchers, fishbowls and aquariums are ideal, but the eggs should not be placed into an aquarium that has fish. The fish may eat or pick at the frog eggs or harm the tadpoles once they hatch. Your frog eggs may also transfer disease from the pond to your fish.

The water in the tank should be fresh and clean, but do not use straight tap water without letting it sit uncovered for at least 48 hours to let the chlorine in the water evaporate. Small plastic plants in your frogs' container will give them something to sit on once they reach adulthood.

Once the eggs have been placed in the water, there is little left to do besides wait. You can make the days go by more quickly by getting kids involved in the different stages of the frogs' life cycle. If you like, have kids draw pictures of the different stages of the frogs' life cycle and tape it to the front of the container. Kids can take note of the number of days that it takes for the frogs to reach each stage of the cycle and write it beneath the picture. It's so much fun to check each day to see if the eggs have hatched or if the tadpoles have begun to grow little legs.

Tadpoles need very little care. As long as you have very few of them in the glass container, there should not be too much waste and plenty of oxygen for them to survive. If the tadpoles spend all of their time breathing air at the top of the water, then you will need to find a way to increase their air supply. The less water there is, the more oxygen there will be in the water for them. Tadpoles and fish need air to survive more than they need extra water around them. If the tadpoles are in a bowl, lower the water level to the halfway point so that they have the maximum amount of surface area to their water. If they are in an aquarium, lower the water level to only a couple of inches deep.

Tadpoles can eat flake goldfish food until they have grown to adult size. If the water becomes foul smelling or cloudy, change it with fresh water that has been allowed to sit for at least 48 hours first. This will keep your tadpoles healthy and happy. Make sure that you release them where you found the eggs as soon as they reach adulthood. It is important to teach children about conservation and preserving the ecosystem around them by replacing animals if you remove them for personal study.