Pond Life
I mentioned in my recent Outdoor Play post that Aodhan and I are embarking on a study of pond life. Following his interest we spent over a month exploring ocean habitats and creatures. He continues to show true passion (with moments of intense revulsion *have you seen a female anglerfish?!), for ocean habitats and I am going to keep this theme in the background of our play, especially as we move closer to our vacation to Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton (roll on June 15th!).
The lily pad outdoor fun was fantastic, and Aodhan asked me to make ‘indoor lily pads’ because he is as neurotic as me about mixing outdoor and indoor dirt. I was game, and it turned into a giant pond diorama in the middle of our living room.
I found some brilliant stretchy pond creatures at Dollarama, and we were able to complete our first graphing exercise whilst having an inaugural dip in our pond. The graph was so simple to make: painters tape on the hardwood worked as a great little DIY grid and I used one of each animal at the base to indicate the bars. He even practiced some estimation skills as I asked him to give his best guess about which bar had the most.
We then used our big tongs to transfer our salamanders to logs and our frogs to lily pads.
The ultimate adventure of our pond exploring so far was definitely the homemade light table that we used for sorting our pond creatures by colour. Aodhan loved it!
But, the most hilarious moment was when Aodhan put three frogs together on the lily pad and screamed out:
they are mating!!
I find Aodhan’s humour so inspiring and a constant reminder that learning is about play, laughter and exploring.
After some hands-on pond play we watched this Red-Eyed Tree Frog life cycle video, a recommendation from Make, Do and Friend. Tomorrow, we are going to incorporate her brilliant life-cycle visuals to talk about it a little bit more (my water beads are soaking as we speak…frog spawn, here we come!).
Deb at Living Montessori Now, has a fantastic pinterest board devoted to studying ponds. It’s full of great ideas and resources.
I am linking up to Montessori Monday at LivingMontessoriNow