Fables and frogs

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are learning about Spring, the life cycle of the frog and the fable, “The exploding frog” (aka “The frog and the ox”).


The life cycle of a frog


Life cycle of a frog


Panama frogs serenade females – The trials of life – BBC


The mystery of the red-eyed tree frog

Here are the links we have used in previous years:
ianmclean.edublogs.org/2011/10/18/frogs-frogs-frogs-life-cycles-fables/.

Frogs and their life cycle


Aesop: biography of a great thinker

Following their investigations into variations on Aesop’s fable of The exploding frog (aka The bull and the bullfrog, aka The frog and the ox), plus Sally Murphy & Simon Bosch’s picture book, The floatingest frog, students in Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 are learning about factual information on frogs in science & technology.

Zeeko and the waving golden frogs

At today’s Musica Viva performance, the members of the musical group Zeeko sang a song that featured a species of endangered toad, the Golden Frog, the males of which have a call so soft (and obscured by the noise of running water in its homeland), that it has delevoped a unique hand wave when approaching other males:


Attenborough: Golden Frog: fighting & mating – Life in cold blood – BBC wildlife

What’s cookin’?

What's cooking?

Any idea what’s bubbling away on my cooktop? I’m dyeing two customised puppets!

Giraffe/dog composite & spare tiger puppets
And this becomes…

Bat & Panther
… this!

Yes, they are a pair of customized puppets, now dried in the washing machine spin-drier. The completed bat has wings cut from brown felt and the new eyes are flat beads in a pink plastic, Supaglued over the original black giraffe eyes. 50 cents for a packet containing lots (of future replacement eyes?) I love bargain shops!

The panther’s eyes are some teardrop-shaped yellow plastic “jewels”, originally bought for a different project. The only reason for turning a tiger into a panther was to give the bat a dunking buddy, and use up the leftover dye.

Cat & Frog
These two new additions (above) look rather sedate after the cooking pot episode!

More puppets! It’s an obsession!

Puppets 1

Bargain basement animal puppets at $3 each from The Reject Shop, Penrith Plaza. Not sure why the Dalmatian has a yellow nose. I originally rejected these four puppets as my least favourites, but at just $3 each they made a hard bargain to pass up.

Puppets 2

More cute animal puppets, this time from the online Sunshine Markets, Queensland. The parcel arrived today! These were an irresistible Internet find: crocodile, leopard and (what the online catalogue called) “the Big Good Wolf”. Really? With those eyes?

More about frogs

After experiencing many versions of the fable, “The exploding frog“, our Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are studying factual information about frogs. These Youtube video clips (below) will support their learning:


Inside Taronga’s Corroboree frog conservation container
(with Michael McFadden, Mrs Brisco’s son-in-law)


Corroboree frog update from Mt Kosciuszko


Tree frog jumping


Frog swimming


Green treefrog calling


Frog song

Frogs, frogs, frogs: life cycles, fables

Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 students are studying the season of spring – and life cycles. These Youtube video clips (below) will help with the trickier concepts (frog attributes, such as their sticky tongue, etc) not conveyed visually in the big book, “Tadpole diary” by David Drew.


Time-lapse: frog spawn


Tadpoles eating bread


Frog fail! (Dragonfly escapes frog attack)

And, for a bit of fun:

Super Fly carries frog (haha)

We are moving onto Fables this term, and the first fable ties in quite nicely with the work on frogs in Life Cycles:


The frog and the ox


La grenouille et le boeuf – The frog and the ox


The frog and the ox fable

More, more, more!

Here are some more Guided Inquiry Endangered animals (Stage 3 science & technology); three more of the students’ digital slideshows have now been uploaded to the world.


by Monica, Jacob & Caleb


by Zain, Will & Rhianna


by Jayde J., Madilyne & Ben

Enjoy! Share! And please feel free to comment. More slideshows will appear as the term comes to a close.

As mentioned previously, just a few points to consider with Photo Peach: Use it as judiciously as you would a series of Youtube clips. Don’t permit students to do open browsing; Photo Peach is a Web 2.0 facility that is open to anyone, and the slideshows are “unrated”. Also, if you notice that new comments have been added to a slideshow you’ve made, please preview the slideshow again before using it with students so you can monitor (and moderate/remove) unwanted comments. (Or close off comments altogether.) Consider a subscription to Photo Peach, which enables you to add your own or Creative Commons music, a wider range of transitions, and the capacity to download slideshows to your hard drive, web space or a CD.

Entering the literary garden of delights!

Frog Prince & golden ball
Student comment: “I saw the Frog Prince and his golden ball in a bowl, but I think that is the same bowl Chook used last year when he was being an astronaut!”

Today, the students at my school had their first experiences in our newly built school library. I’ve spent three weeks unpacking the book stock (from long-term storage) and decorating with new and nostalgic elements. The students were full of questions, but I used Circle Time to maximise and equalise all the the talking and listening. It was a great day. The looks on their faces, as they explored (hands free) all the new nooks and crannies made all the planning and hard work worth while.

Archeological dig
Our historic school milk bottles are now enshrined in a shadow box.

The quote from a framing store, to have the bottles placed into a customised shadow box was $200 but I did it for about $40, thanks to parts bought from Spotlight. The inside text reads: Penrith Public School’s library stands on the site of a portable library building, and before that a previous portable building. In 2010, workmen excavating the foundations found these “school milk” bottles buried deep in the rubble. One is embossed “1/3 PINT PASTEURISED MILK”. See the original blog entry of our archeological find HERE.

48 more photos of display elements ready for today’s opening are HERE.