Salamander Room

Title: Salamander Room
Author: Ann Mazer
Illustrator: Steve Johnson
Copyright: 1991
Summary: For those who have always wished they could bring all the outside indoors: an imagination conservation between a nature lover and his mother.

        

In this book the main character finds salamanders in the woods. Salamanders are amphibians like frogs, toads and newts. The children learned the difference between amphibians and reptiles.  We did many activities. The first thing we did was learn the characteristics of reptiles and amphibians. They learned about their skin, eggs and backbones. Then they learned about frog calls, life cycles, and worm habitats. They played some fun games too!

Science: ( reptiles, amphibians) 

First the kids got to run there fingers over boards with either cellophane or sandpaper. They had to determine which board represents reptile skin and which one was amphibian skin. Then they had to describe the differences between two different types of eggs. I used tapioca with water to represent the jelly like feel of an amphibian egg. Toy grapes in sand represented reptile eggs.

Next we learned about back bones. We got to touch turtle shells, snake skin and skeletons. We reached around and felt our own back bones then we discussed that all vertebrates have back bones. We studied the skeletons and felt the back bones. We also colored a worksheet.

Science Related Games-

The kids played Frog Leap and Reptile Bingo. Frogs are excellent jumpers. We laid a jump rope on the floor and measured how far we could jump.We also had lots of fun using the Reptile Bingo set.

The kids learned the songs of frogs and toads using a sound machine and flash cards!

We also talked  about the life cycle of a frog. I described the changes a frog goes from egg to adult using puppets. Then we used stamps to create our own life cycles and looked at pictures of frog a life cycles. Last but not least we looked at plastic life cycle figures of frogs and colored a life cycle picture.

We made worm habitats using pudding, Oreos and gummy worms. Yummy!

Books and movies we read and watched

Language Arts-(story telling, copy work) 

The kids made up stories using frog and turtle puppets. They also copied a page from the book in their best hand writing.

Mathematics:(word problems)

 Lily and Aj worked on 3 pages of word problems together.

Art: (salt dough sculptures, diorama)

 The kids worked hard sculpturing salamanders. They also painted them and made a habitat for them .

Field trip: (Cape Maid Farms)

We took a field trip to Cape Maid Farms pet store to see reptiles and amphibians.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our next book and activities!