On 28th April it was ‘Save the Frogs’ day. To celebrate this day Froglife held an event at Festival Park, Glasgow with the Glasgow City Council rangers and Helen, my fellow Natural Communities trainee. Here we did pond dipping and activities for children, which were popular and we found lots of water invertebrates and a frog!
Tadpoles in the Classroom was a pilot project run by Froglife at Ravenswood Primary School in Cumbernauld, over two months. For the first session we took the children to their local green space, Ravenswood Marsh, and collected frogspawn from the ponds there. We took it back to the classroom and within four days it had hatched into tadpoles. The children were extremely excited and spent the next few weeks looking after them and noting the changes in the tadpoles as they grew. Each week we went and delivered a session on topics such as ‘the difference between frogs and toads’, ‘frogs worldwide’, ‘water invertebrates’ and ‘food chains’. Due to the warmth of the classroom the tadpoles developed quickly and by the end of the Easter holidays they were developing back and front legs. When they were starting to try and escape from the tank it was time to release them back into their pond, which we did with the children. It was a successful project which Froglife, the children and their teachers all enjoyed!
Showing the children some frogspawn
Froglife were at Gardening Scotland in Edinburgh in June. Here we had a stand and had great fun talking to visitors about amphibians, hearing their stories and giving them advice on ponds and frogs. We also had a ‘My Wild Life’ area where people could write reminiscences about their experiences of nature during their childhood. It was really nice to read the different stories people wrote about their happy times in the outdoors!
Gardening Scotland stand