Our new house has a beautiful pool in the backyard!! There is no screen over it yet, so someone is constantly scooping debris out. A couple of weeks ago we walked out to find the top step covered with tiny black things. At first we thought they were buds from a nearby tree, or maybe tiny bugs. Two days later it was very clear what they were.
FROG EGGS!
Do you see all the little black dots? Those are thousands of frog eggs!
Hubby & I were grossed out, but the kids were beyond excited. Sad faces were displayed when we informed them that there was no way our pool was becoming a frog pond. They quickly scooped up a few to observe.
The excitement didn’t last for long, however …
It turns out our whole pool was infested with tadpoles, not just the top step!
Insert horror movie music here.
The kids’ wonder quickly turned to disgust, with the girls convinced that they had surely swallowed frog eggs the last time they went for a swim. Hubby & I had been planning on going to the pool store on Saturday to learn Pool Care 101, but we bee-lined it over and stocked up on chemicals to shock the pool.
Our cute little tadpoles are growing and changing each day. We learned some interesting things about tadpoles:
- It takes at least 6 weeks to go from egg to tadpole to frog.
- They will eat lettuce that has been boiled or frozen. (They will also eat eggs that haven’t hatched. Ewww!)
- Once their legs appear, they will need rocks or dirt to climb on or they will drown.
- A frog returns to where it hatched. We were told that at one time our pool was filled with nasty sludge – the perfect frog breeding ground.
Have some Froggy Fun with your kiddos!!
Frog Life Cycle Cards & Activities
Frog Life Cycle Animated Video
Tadpole Development Coloring Page
{Real Life Homeschooling} is a monthly blog hop that I co-host with 20+ bloggers. It is about turning the world into our classroom and showing how homeschooling happens in real life as well as during “school hours” .
We invite you to link up your Real Life Homeschooling posts!!
Super cool! My younger two (and me too) would freak out with excitement! We’re pretty big on amphibians at our house. My 12 year old rescued as many tree frog tadpoles as she could scoop off my in-laws pool cover a while back. Now our back deck area looks like a tadpole nursery. Some finally started getting back legs this past week. Soon we’ll have baby tree frogs to release into our nature garden. 🙂
By the way, that’s what it looks like you have too…an abundance of tree frog tadpoles. Super cute!
Swallowing frogs eggs sure would be horrid!