Life Cycles and Intro to Amphibians

To continue with Reptile and Amphibian week, today I had a few activities to introduce amphibians and talk about animal life cycles.

I set up two sensory bins. A bowl of water to represent a pond and a tray of sand to represent a beach or dirt. I placed tiny frog and turtle figurines in eggs and placed them in the appropriate location that each animal lays their eggs.




The kids had a blast with this, but its definitely important to have a backup activity to switch to right after otherwise they will just want to make a mess with the sand and water. Also, a tip on sand, we happened to have something on handed called therapeutic sand, if you're worried about sand being too messy, definitely look into this. It was firmer and didn't stick to the kids hands as much as normal sand.

This activity helped transition well into talking about the differences and similarities between amphibians like frogs and reptiles like turtles. We did a frog life cycle craft to learn about the process of metamorphosis.

We also spent some time learning the names of common turtle/tortoise species, sea turtles, and salamanders. I laminated some great guides from the NYSDEC which open up to show a picture on one side and descriptions on the other side. We played guessing games where I (and sometimes they) would describe a particular species and we had to look at the pictures guess which one it was.