Try a tadpole

Try a Tadpole

As long as there have been kids and tadpoles, kids have been fascinated by tadpoles. And perhaps tadpoles have been fascinated by kids. We don’t know.

If you have never watched a slippery little head-with-a-tail change into a fat-bellied frog, it’s time to try it. The first step is to visit a pond in early spring to collect frog or toad eggs, or spawn. Frog spawn looks like a mass of cloudy jelly; toad spawn looks like long strings of black beads; and newt spawn is found as single eggs, each surrounded by clear jelly. Collect about a handful of one kind of spawn. Don’t mix frog and toad or newt spawn in the same container.  Put the spawn in a gallon jar or aquarium filled with pond water, and add some water weeds.

Your part in growing little frogs is easy. Keep the aquarium out of direct sunlight. Change the water once a week – always using pond water, not tap water. And once the tadpoles have hatched, provide water plants or decaying lettuce for them to eat. When the tadpoles begin to grow their back legs, their diet will change to meat. You can hang a tiny piece of meat in the water. Or simply feed them bits of dog or cat food.

As the tadpoles lose their tails and begin to breathe air, place rocks in the aquarium so that they can climb out of the water. Keep the aquarium covered or they may jump out! When the young frogs become this active, it’s time to release them at the pond where you collected the spawn. Then they will be in the right environment to catch the insects they need to eat.

Releasing tiny frogs in this way – after keeping them safe from predators while they were growing – is helpful to the frog population, which sadly is declining.        

From A Kid’s Spring EcoJournal by Toni Albert.