Videos

SCIENCE ALIVE! - Hop N' Change

Added Jun 10, 2021 •

Copy this URL:
Embed code:	<iframe class="edlio-embed-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="360" src="//www.esc20.net/apps/embed/?v=320505" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Change dimensions

In this SCIENCE ALIVE video, we will be taking a look inside our Frog Life Cycle Kit, as we will be reviewing the the materials it comes with. We will also observing the Northern Leopard Frog and discussing some facts. Life Cycle Kits are available as a 2week item and the leopard frogs are ordered as a permanent classroom resident. If you choose not to keep the frog, you are more than welcome to return it to the Living Science Center.

Show Transcript

(soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) Welcome back to science alive, my name is Mercedes and today's session is titled "Hop N' Change", which is also the name of our frog life cycle kit! Today we will also be observing the leopard frog. Hi, good morning! My name, I want to talk to you a little about what is in our frog life cycle kit. We have a wonderful custom bag that we acquired last semester, for Living Science. What comes in this kit will be a life cycle poster of the frog, with a lot of information about the different stages of the cycle and also models of the four stages of the life cycle. From egg to adult frog. Then we have print material 21 pages, I believe, of print material that can be reproduced. Good information about the life of the Frog and a wonderful tadpole to frog read aloud book for the kids. Very fun. Now, let's bring out the frog. Yay! The fun part. The fun part, right! This is the leopard frog. I'm just going to take this out, so you can see him better. Leopard frog ca be identified by the brownish green body that they have, it is usually covered in dark colored spots. The leopard frogs can be ordered for your classroom as a permanent resident, or even pair it in the lesson with our frog life cycle kit. These are not considered our two-week check-out animals. The frog, again like I said, is a permanent resident, but if you choose not to keep it, you are more than welcome to return them to us in the cup. These amphibians are semiaquatic, which means they need both land and water to survive. They primarily dwell on the land during the summer months, and they hibernate in the mud during the winter. In the late spring you can often hear the males vocalize to attract females and their main diet consists of snails, slugs, other bugs like ants and beetles and worms. The tadpoles usually feast on algae or rotting plants. A way that you can keep a leopard frog in your classroom is as simple as this. Of course, they would need some sort of hide, like what we had before. Just so they have something to sit on. You don't want to keep them in the water 24/7, because again they're semiaquatic not fully aquatic like our dwarf aquarium frogs. I have some materials to help us put together a simple enclosure. Mercedes is going to bring out the aquarium or Kritter Keeper. Which is this right here. So, we'll move this aside. Here's a brand new one. She needs some substrate to put in the bottom. You can either use pebbles-- I have rocks right here, but I'm not going to put them on the table because they're really heavy. They need a hide Right here. The water dish The water dish is optional. With the substrate you can either fill half of the Kritter Keeper with the rocks and just fill the rest with water or you can put this in here as well as rocks. Just so is easier cleaning and easier maintenance. So you just, take this out. Easy cleaning you also have listed a lamp with a UV light, is optional. To give them more light? Yes. Amphibians do need some sort of vitimin D source, but since the leopard frogs are mostly nocturnal, it's not really necessary, but it is a good idea to have a UVB lamp with light. If you turn over here, we have something similar. This a UVB light for our anoles that we have. We just turn it on while we're here and we turn it off when we're not here. If you don't use the UVB light, you can always purchase calcium powder to mix with their food so they get those extra vitamins that they need. They don't require a lot to survive, but it's always nice to have something pretty looking in your classroom. Having something that makes them feel more comfortable and more natural. We send them barebone in a cup so for you to create a habitat just a real fun exciting thing. Put the hide right here. You can put it this the way, so you can observe them through this plastic or you can put it this way to give him a little bit more privacy. Put the water dish in there. I also have some decorations. Some fake plants to give them some hiding places. One right there and one right here. Nice! Of course we still need the water... and of course you would need the frog. That's it! Beautiful! Let's give him a better habitat. So I have another one that I had made a couple days ago. This one would be a very simple cost-efficient enclosure, but if you wanted to use more living materials and make it look more natural, you can always use an aquarium. Beautiful! If you wanted to incorporate more of our materials, we offer liverwort moss. We do. That can be an option to keep it very moist in here. You would want to mist it every day so it doesn't dry out. You can always go to the pet store and buy the very fine coco fiber substrate. You can go and buy a hide and then you can also order some of our red wigglers and isopods to put into the substrate to help the decomposition of the waste from the frog. I going to put him in here and see how he likes it. If he doesn't like it, there's something wrong with him. Welcome home! There we go! Very nice Mercedes. Thank you. The leopard frogs have very powerful muscles in their legs, so they can jump really high. I would recommend that you use tank clips you were to use something like this or even just putting a couple of books on each side because if he does manage to let himself in between this somehow, it can push up on the lid. Going back to the kits, what TEKS does it cover. Ah, good question! It covers process TEKS, such as observation and investigation of objects, how they grow and how they move. There we go! Right on que! Then it covers content TEKS too for basic needs, habitats and systems. These are across the grade levels. Variations of these TEKS are seen K-12. What would a teacher do if a frog accidentally escapes? Well, if he escapes, of course, you can just have a hilarious escapade of trying to catch him, but if it's lost or sometimes you even experienced a dead frog. If that happens, we would just like to be notified so that we can account for our inventory and keep up with how many frogs we have. We are going to conclude this session. This is the last session of the semester. The water kit that we will be recording is not going to be a live session. We're going to be collaborating with someone from the Texas Wildlife Association, we will be going over the water trunk. Be sure and look out for that video. The video will be available on the video library. Okay, so again, my name is Mercedes. I'm Peggy. If you have any questions regarding our materials or services, please contact us at (210) 370-5688 or at livingscience@esc20.net Thank you again. Thank you, bye-bye now!

Videos

SCIENCE ALIVE! - Hop N' Change

More videos in Living Science Materials Center