Frog Pond

I'm a teacher, so I am off in the summer and spend all my days with my little girl.  She's two and needs a lot of entertaining, so I try to think of ideas before I get to the summer and buy cheap little things I see along the way to amuse her.  I got an idea when I was in the store one day and saw eight little frog favors for a dollar (found at Wal-Mart in the party section, kind of like these here).  I bought them and today put the idea into practice.

My idea was to create a frog pond.  Let's just say, Texas gets HOT in the summer.  We're now into hundred degree weather.  So, how could I bring water indoors?  I have this wide basin/bucket.  I filled it with water and Alexis and I put in the frogs, then flies and spiders, food for the frogs.  Also, I added green pipe cleaners to serve as reeds in the pond.  This little get up lends itself to several educational activities: teaching about frogs and ponds (I need to go to the library and get books about these now--should have done it earlier!), counting the frogs, flies, spiders, reeds, sorting the aforementioned wildlife into colors or sizes, etc.

As we played, Alexis turned the pipe cleaners into fishing poles and asked for fish in the pond.  Luckily, in scouring my old preschool supplies, I happened upon fish beads.  They have holes in them, so it was perfect for "fishing" since you can put them right on the pipe cleaners.  This added another learning activity: stringing beads.






For our beach vacation I purchased these jumbo ocean animals for Alexis.  She loved them at the beach and, of course, the pond then turned into the ocean as she wanted the ocean animals to play, too.  The ocean animals aren't really meant for water, but I covered the mold holes in them and they did fine.  All but one didn't collect any water at all (the only one that did was the turtle because he is made of two pieces, but I was able to shake the water out).

All in all, a fun summer activity, bringing water fun inside!