Amphibians as classroom pets need updated caretaking approach

Kevin Zippel, program officer for Amphibian Ark, shared with me a recent paper he helped author with other frog-erati of the herpetology world, all of them associated with the Herpetologists Education Committee of the
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR). I know my daughters, when in elementary school, were thrilled when the classroom would adopt a snake or a guinea pig. What great lessons occur when a teacher instructs children how to care for an animal, and when children take turns providing that care. Now a movement is under foot to involve classrooms in the rescue and care of amphibians. A noble idea, but one fraught with danger if the amphibian were to catch a disease from a reused aquarium, and then is released back into the wild, introducing a dangerous new pathogen to a woodland area or pond.

Zippel and company overview the situation, and provide practical steps that teachers should take, in the paper you can access by clicking here.

I found it interesting that the authors go out of their way to not condemn the idea of bring amphibians into the classroom. Here’s an excerpt I particularly liked:

It was of primary importance to us not to simply squelch this classroom exercise for
reasons of risk avoidance. To us, this exercise is a great example of the spirit of
encouraging a collective public conscience of “bioliteracy” outlined so eloquently by
Ehrlich and Pringle (2008:11584):

“The earlier in the developmental process comes exposure to
nature, the better the odds of inspiring devotion to biodiversity
and its conservation. It is a rare conservationist who did not
encounter nature as a child. Every one of us can go to
elementary schools to show pictures of animals and plants and
tell funny stories about ecology. The teachers will be happy to
have us. More ambitious people might think about how to
finance and institutionalize school field trips to natural areas.”

 

Teaching Chicago kids about amphibians

Here’s a terrific story and video of the new amphibian education exhibit for kids at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. Looks like a lot of fun, with an important message.

 

Toads as life sustaining protein for malnourished children

They give us clues to medical miracles. They warn us about environmental dangers by being our canaries in the coalmine. They sing us to sleep in the areas lucky enough to still have robust populations of them. They bring color and quirkiness to the world. And when times are tough, they can even sustain us. Can’t say I ever want to sample salted frog, but here’s the story from Vietnam. Excerpt:

Tho An was always poor, dirt poor. All of its residents were subsistence farmers scratching out a dusty living by any means necessary. But, that all changed when an adventurous local decided it was time to put the common toad to good use.

 

According to residents, Le Van Quy was the first to harness the power of the amphibian as a means to escape from grinding poverty. Quy’s family was so poor his grandchildren were malnourished. Quy had had enough. Catching toads in the fields soon became catching toads and salting toads. That turned into catching, slating and shredding toads. Before long, his grandkids were no longer hungry, and the effects of being malnourished were replaced with strapping, healthy children.

 

Realizing he was onto something, Quy brought the novelty to Hanoi to sell as a street vendor. Salted shredded toad meat has quickly become a specialty and a diet recommended for treating malnourished children.

 

 

Earth Day lessons involving frogs

So for Earth Day, how can our amphibian friends help teachers and home school parents instill the right lessons in our children? Here are some good resources:

National Geographic offers a “Frog Alert! Frog Alert!” lesson plan online. It’s designed for kindergarten through second grade, and it focuses on the effects of water pollution.

Go to a nearby stream and clean up a small section by removing garbage. (But be safe.) Here’s a thought providing activity that the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. did this weekend. As you do the cleanup, you can explain what pollution in our waterways does to amphibians.

Here’s a slew of kid-friendly PowerPoint presentations, courtesy of theteachersguide.com.

There’s a kid-friendly lesson on how to draw a frog here.

And, even a lesson plan on tadpole-to-frog developmental stages using clay and Crayola markers.

Finally, spend some time on the Amphibian Ark Web site to explain the dangers facing amphibians, and have the child sign the online petition.

And, come back later this month for more ideas on how your child can help save the frog. Something big is being planned.

 

Frog talk with children: how to explain the crisis

Terri Williams is a good friend to Amphibian Ark who recently gave a lesson to a kindergarden class about the fragile future of amphibians. The next day, children in the class (at a Catholic school) said prayers for loved ones — and frogs. I asked Terri to write down what she did to make the kids care so deeply, and this is what she wrote:

I was invited to speak to a kindergarten class at Mary Queen of Peace in Webster Groves.   The class mascot, “Hoppy,” is a stuffed frog that is dressed as either a male or female depending which child takes him/her home at the end of each week. I mentioned to the teacher that some frogs are being feminized due to industrial waste and chemical dumping and that they are born with both male and female genitalia.  I assured her that I would not share THAT interesting fact with the room full of five year olds. 

 

The first thing we did to get the kids in the mood to talk and learn about frogs was to have them cut and assemble frog hats.  These consisted of long green construction paper strips laid out in front of them.  The children had to glue-stick on two big eyes – white circles with black dots in the center of the circle.  These were glued in the middle of the strip. They had to attach two legs close to the eyes and two legs near each end of the strips.  They drew a black squiqqly line under the eyes. The piece de resistance was a long red tongue pasted on the mouth on which the children happily slapped a small fly sticker.  Because the tongue hung down over the bridge of each child’s nose and two of the legs hugged the child’s temples – I found myself addressing a roomful of mini-gladiators.

 

After the bands were wrapped around each of the children’s heads and taped securely, I asked the class who knew where frogs came from.  Several arms shot up eagerly accompanied by “Oh! Oh!  I know!”  I pointed to one of the uniformed children:  “Oh! Um…Um..I forgot…..”   “Wrong answer!” I replied and pointed to another frantically waving child who shouted “EGGS!!!”  I asked what came after the eggs which caused arms to start waving frantically again.  “Yes?”  I asked a cute little girl.  “Tadpoles” she responded confidently.  And so the questions continued covering topics such as where frogs lived and what hurts frogs.  This latter topic was met by silence.  So we proceeded to the “hypotheses testing and biology lesson” part of the program.

 

Twenty-two frog crowned children squeezed around a table that held a glass bowl filled with water.  In the bowl were three small globs of petroleum jelly representing “tadpole eggs” and a pink hard boiled egg.  I asked the kids if they knew what kind of egg sat in the middle of the bowl.  They shouted “Oh! Oh! I know!! I know!”  I said okay, tell me what it is!  They shouted in unison “An Easter egg!” (well that’s all I had at home!).  I said yes of course, but what was it beside that.  We eventually got around to the fact that it was a chicken egg which has a hard shell as do many other bird eggs, reptiles, etc.  The point was they could see that the chicken egg was hard and the “tadpole eggs” were porous and vulnerable. 

 

I took a small bottle of blue food coloring and squeezed several drops into the bowl as I asked the children what they thought would happen to the two types of eggs.  This elicited several hypotheses, a couple of which were correct:  that the dye would soak through the tadpole eggs.  When asked what would happen to the tadpoles inside, all agreed that they would be hurt in some way or “maybe even die”.  The dye beaded up and lingered on the petroleum jelly confirming their guesses.  I lifted the chicken egg out of the blue water, wiped it dry and showed them that little or no color clung to it.

 

 

After the kids were quietly sitting back at their small tables, we proceeded to talk about global warming, habitat destruction, chemical/pollution dangers and how frogs are both predators and prey.  To sum up the lessons, I gathered the kids in their carpeted reading corner and had them sit down.  I took three kids from the group and explained that everyone sitting down represented frogs that had already disappeared and that the kids standing next to me represented frogs that would disappear soon unless we helped them.

 

After class, when the kid were washing up for lunch, I asked one of the students what her favorite part of the “frog stuff” was.  She said “The frog hat!”  I then re-phrased the question and asked what was one thing she would remember about frogs.  She said “How chemicals can hurt tadpoles”.  A good answer which re-enforces the point that little kids are visual, experiential learners

 

I spoke with the teacher the next afternoon who called to thank me again for talking about the frogs.  She said that at morning prayers, a little boy said “I want to pray for my friend Robbie’s dad and the frogs”. This was followed by several “Oh! Oh! I want to pray for the frogs, too!!”  And they did.