Frog theories

Recently a small frog was discovered in our classroom sink. It looked like a blob of clay under the dish rack. Coincidentally, plastic frogs had been washed over the weekend and were drying in the rack right above where the frog was sleeping. Hmmm....

After some research, I learned that this frog is actually a gray tree frog that can change color slightly to fit its surroundings. They live their whole lives in trees, only coming to the ground to mate in the Spring or to hibernate in winter.

So I shared the story of the frog's discovery with the children at our end of the morning circle (see earlier post about morning meetings!). We wanted help with thinking about how the frog got into our sink. Lisa and I were engaged in magical thinking- maybe a plastic frog came alive! But we kept our idea to ourselves so that our students could generate their own theories.



Many students have created small forests with natural
materials for our small classroom friends: earthworms,
snails, and now our tree frog.

We know that at this age children often combine magical thinking with their knowledge of the physical world to explain natural phenomena. Often their theories demonstrate an intuitive sense of scientific laws, but are explained using magical or whimsical descriptions. Like when we observe rainbows in our classroom on sunny mornings: there's a general sense that light is shining through our window (through hanging prisms) creating these spectra, but children will often try to catch the rainbow, or personify it with human or animal features. The narratives that children create around a mysterious occurrence help with processing their observations and with tweaking their theories. Playful investigation is part of the young child's pursuit of scientific thinking.

Here is the list of theories for how our frog arrived in our sink:
He came up the drain in the sink. (We now know the frog is a she)
He hopped all the way up the building and came in the window to the sink (the window is right above the sink, too)
Downstairs, a robber sneaked him up here and dropped him in the sink when the police came
It climbed up the wall, over the ceiling, and fell in the sink
It climbed up the fire escape and came into the window and then into the sink
He has sticky feet to climb up a building wall

In reflection, the children's theories were pretty heavily scientific, or practical, except the one about the robber (and that was a fun story!). They seem to understand something about frogs, and how they navigate the world. We've never had a "lesson" on frogs- that's not how we operate. But we can think together about this frog and clearly the Rainbow Room students have a strong sense about frogs already.

Perhaps they have connected the dots between what they have heard or read or seen about frogs or other small animals and what drives an animal to resort to a human dwelling. I can see critical thinking at work here. And creativity. The opportunities for thinking and learning about our world are all around us, even in our classroom sink.


Our female gray tree frog, now a classroom pet