Frogs & Bread

My friend, "S", and I started a mini co-op with just her 2 girls and my daughter. We are going to meet every other week and take turns teaching on different subjects. Yesterday was our first "class" and I was the teacher for "frogs." We had a wonderful time!

Usually, I just start reading things and teaching, but this time "S" & I discussed things ahead of time and came up with a plan of what we wanted the girls to learn. (Great idea, huh? I guess most people probably do that, but I've usually just jumped right in.) Anyway, we decided we wanted them to learn:

• What's an amphibian?
• What's the life cycle of a frog?
• What's the difference between a frog and a toad?

I got some books from the library and spent quite a bit of time at the library. My favorite website was: www.allaboutfrogs.org. Favorite books: Amphibians by Bev Harvey and Frogs by Gail Gibbons.
From the All About Frogs site, we made some froggy bread! It was a lot of fun and turned out a little chewy, but good! And, we got to work in some math (if we need 6 cups of flour and there are 3 of you girls, how many cups should each girl add?). And, since we're studying microbes in our human body study, we talked about yeast and how it makes bread rise.

From one of the new blogs on my sidebar, "A Room of My Own", I "stole" the idea of using 2 hola hoops to make a Venn Diagram. I labeled one as "frogs" and the other as "toads" and had the girls take turns putting my descriptions in the correct places. (This would, of course, cover the characteristics of an amphibian on the overlap.) They got 100% so it looks like they learned what I tried to teach! Yeah!