Discovering Life

My girls love to discover new bugs as long as they aren't spiders or scary flants (as named by my daughters: flying ants=flants, actually crane flies). We love to dig for worms and watch ants and butterflies in the yard. As often as possible I encourage my girls to touch the bugs. Usually after an initial timid period they love to touch the bugs and hold them.
Recently we discovered a new bug (in our lettuce). An inchworm! I have always loved inchworms and I am fascinated by the way that they move. I was, therefore, very excited for my girls to discover this lil' fella. We played with him for quite a while and then let him go in the yard.

Our other discovery did not end so nicely! We found tadpoles!!!! Our neglected wading pool had turned into a pond-like environment for many water creatures. Before dumping and cleaning the pool I fished out 10 tadpoles. (side note: tadpoles are not as easy as you may think to capture. Even harder is trying to capture tadpoles while avoiding mosquito larvae.) After making sure they had survived the night in their new home, I researched how to keep them alive to froghood and introduced the girls to them. I was excited at how quickly they grew and how much potential they presented for learning. We changed them to a new and improved container after just a couple days. Then, they started dying. My poor husband was trying to helpfully add more water to their dish. He had not read that the tap water chemicals were dangerous to the tadpoles. We tried transferring them out of the water, but within 24 hours they had all died. Poor tadpoles.

 What kind of wildlife have you discovered and learned about with your family?