Look at the size of those webbed feet!

Yep, you guessed it, or maybe you didn’t. Seems Mr. and Mrs. Toad were doing their “spring thing” and my son caught them in the act. Now, after I reprimanded him that he should have left them be while they were in this delicate state, we were all quite amazed at getting the opportunity to actually see this! The female is the larger toad on bottom, full of eggs, the male is the smaller toad on top. He waits patiently until the female lays her eggs, which look like a string of black pearls, and then he deposits his necessaries upon the eggs as they exit the female to make them start growing into tadpoles. There’s a little “birds and the bees” lesson for you.

The male made a quick getaway, so we were able to observe the female more closely.

She’s quite large, definitely full of eggs. My youngest agreed to “pet” the toad. She doesn’t quite know what to think yet of these strange hopping creatures. Regardless, the bumpy skin felt neat to her.

Then she reluctantly agreed to hold the big toad. It didn’t last for long though. The female hopped back into the creek. A few minutes later we could hear the male calling to her. I hope they got reunited!

 A couple of weeks ago he caught a huge Green Frog that he at first thought was a Bullfrog, but after doing research we knew he once again had himself a Green Frog. Turns out that Green Frogs and American Bullfrogs are similar in some ways, so we have to be keen on our observation skills and armed with research and information to find out the differences between them. So, when he caught his frog today he knew right away that he finally had his prized catch!

 So, just what are the differences? 

In the above photo that I took you will see the main identifying mark. The American Bullfrog has a ridge which wraps around the tympanum (eardrum), the Green Frog has a ridge which travels straight down it’s back. Here are a few other differences:

- A full grown Bullfrog can measure as large as 8″;  full grown Green Frogs measure up to 4″

- Bullfrog’s eyes are more encaved; Green Frog’s eyes are more pronounced, almost like they are little balls sitting on top of their head

- A Green Frog’s tympanum is more noticeable than the Bullfrog’s

Obviously the Bullfrog he has caught is very small, measuring only about 31/2″ which tells us that this one is very young and still has lots of growing to do. And the Green Frog is already 4″ which tells us that it is at least 4 years old and fully mature. Both of these frogs that he has caught are females. The Bullfrog is female because the tympanum in the male is much larger than the eye versus the same size as seen on this one. The Green Frog is a female because males have a yellow throat and again a tympanum that is MUCH larger than the eye versus the same size as seen on ours.

 If you’d like to hear the calls of both the Green Frog and the Bullfrog, you can visit the following sites:

American Bullfrog

Green Frog

Admist the Bullfrog hoopla, he has also been catching frog tadpoles faster than I can house them! But we are keeping them all for a bit in hopes that we can observe as many as possible turn into frogs.  We’ve been blessed to do just that with one of them. I posted about it previously, and here is an updated photo of our tadpole turned frog. It has just about fully absorbed it’s tail.

It is amazing how quickly it has absorbed it’s tail! We are fairly certain that it is a baby Bullfrog. We also have three other large tadpoles and two smaller tadpoles that we are uncertain of what type they are yet. Here’s is Alex with our tadpole habitat.

Which brings me to my next photo of our critter stand. With all the various “catches” being brought to me, my back deck floor was being taken over by them! So my very supportive husband took his son and they cleaned up an old shelf we had and made him a special place to temporarily keep and observe his pets. What a good dad to do this on Father’s Day!! Thank you Honey!

The large blue container on the floor is for the Eastern Box turtle which he will be setting free in a couple of days.

I’ve also written a blog post on the Shining Dawn Books website titled Frog Metamorphosis, check it out if you have a chance!

We’ve been focusing a bit on learning more about the human body lately. We’ve studied the human body in the past, but it had been awhile and we needed to go over things a bit and elaborate more. So this past week we started reading from an encyclopedia of the human body, which we had gotten from the library, about the respiratory system. We’ve also spent a lot of time the past couple of weeks observing frogs and toads and learning all about them too; so it presented a unique opportunity to contrast the human respiratory system versus the respiratory system of frogs and toads.

Before we released our Green Frog Misty back into the wild we closely observed how the area under her chin expands and shrinks every time she breathes in and out. The following website gave us a demonstration of how that works: Frog Respiration. We also watched the lungs video at the following website to learn even more about the way we breathe: How the Body Works – Lungs Video.

The kids divided a paper in half and compared and contrasted the two different respiratory systems. A couple of the differences that were listed are how we have our diaphragm below our lungs which does the work that the muscles in a frog’s throat does and frogs can take in some air through their skin which of course humans cannot. They also listed some things that are alike such as we both have lungs, and breathe in good oxygen and send out carbon dioxide.

In addition, we talked about how the frogs/toads breathed when they were still tadpoles, opening up a discussion on how animals breathe underwater through gills.

We also used the following website to contrast the respiratory systems of birds and reptiles as well:  Vertebrate Lungs.

I plan to use this contrast/compare method throughout our lessons on the human body. Such as when we learn more about the digestive system we’ll contrast that as well with one of our latest “pets” from the wild! It is truly amazing how much more interested my kids are when things are made hands-on!

Also, Alex finally caught a frog yesterday; frogs can be pretty hard to catch in comparison to the ease of catching toads. He came running into the house holding his prize; Alex was shaking with excitement. He caught a Green Frog; we have lots of those living in our creek.

Of course, both of these experiences have afforded lots of opportunities for learning as well, we’ve done several of the activities from our new NaturExplorers Frogs and Toads unit study e-book which will be officially released VERY soon!! Cindy and I are so very excited and cannot wait to share these awesome resources. I’m also super excited because the creation of these unit studies is going to make preparation for schooling for us so much more simple. I’m already enjoying the fruits of our labor on a personal level in using them.

Stay tuned, we both will be announcing their launch very soon!!!

Just a few of the neat creatures we found:

Spiny Soft Shell Water Turtle (thank you Cheryl for the great photo!)

I’m having trouble identifying this beautiful white moth. 

Of course our favorite always, the American Toad.

We got such a kick out of watching this Carpenter Ant. He was taking one tiny wood chip at a time and throwing it over the edge. Very cool! 

And of course, I couldn’t miss the new wildflowers:

Hairy Buttercup

Star of Bethlehem

Wild Hyacinth

After we climbed back up the mountainside, a packed lunch was so tasty!

I’m really looking forward to our next meeting in a couple of weeks. If you can find a Nature Club/Creation Club anywhere near you run as quick as you can to join up!! If you can’t find one, start one!

 And here is our latest toad friend the kids caught. He just loved posing for photos!

 Do you see our camouflaged toad?

(he’s in the upper left corner!)

He used our 2.5 gallon aquarium that has a screen cover.  This will suffice for now, but if we decide to keep our new pet for very long, we’ll definitely need a bigger aquarium.  Perhaps it’s because we had such a great experience raising the toad tadpoles, but I have to admit, the little fella has really grown on me!  He’s very sweet!  We didn’t get a photo of it, but can you believe he loves to have his tummy rubbed?  Alex has put him to sleep a couple of times doing this.  Too funny!

 Do you see the glands behind where his eyes are?

 Those secrete a poison onto his attackers.

We have to be very careful to keep him away from our cat and dog.

And wash our hands every time after handling him.

In the next photo he’s taking a dip in his pool for a drink!  Did you know that toads drink through their skin?  And did you know that unlike frogs they really aren’t that great of swimmers, and don’t prefer the water.  They will only get in there for certain reasons, one of which is to drink.

Even though their feet aren’t the greatest for swimming, their talent lies in the fact that they are excellent at digging with their little claws (frogs feet are more web-like for swimming).  And digging down deep to hide is what our little toad friend loves to do!

You’ll have to look pretty hard to see him!

(Only his little head is sticking out, to the right of the moss)

Gabby has been so amazed with him.  She just sits and stares for the longest time at him, watching his every move.

And here is the neatest highlight of our experiences so far with him.  He has a preference for roly-poly bugs for dinner.  Take a look at this!!!  Cool!!

Can you see the two little toads camouflaged on the rock (click on the picture to enlarge)?

Here’s a photo of one of them swimming around.  As you can see he still has just a nob of his little tail left.  We read that the tail gets absorbed back into the body, it doesn’t just fall off as some think.

So, after observing them for a bit, we immediately took them down to our creek and realeased them.  So now remains one little tadpole.  I couldn’t get any good pictures on him because the water is too murky.

I also wanted to share some pictures from a couple of days before we left on vacation.  The kids and their friend Danny were checking out the small pool of water and mud over next to our lot and found lots of little baby toads hoping around.

This one is a bit slow in absorbing his tail!  I just think they are so cute!

A quick glance over to the watery part revealed lots more tadpoles in various stages of changing.  It’s hard to see it in the photo, but several were just moments away from coming out of the water.

The whole process of watching this transformation from eggs to baby toads has been priceless for us!  The kids and I have learned so much, especially an even deeper appreciation for God’s magnificent creation.  To think that something can start out as a little black blob swimming about breathing underwater with gills and then transform into a little toad crawling out of the water with legs and having lungs to breath out of water is truly breathtaking to me.  But when we take the time to stop for just a bit to truly observe His creation, this is just what happens.

I look forward to collecting more eggs next Spring!

To see all the posts from our experiences click on Amphibian Study.