Books
🌿🌻Tadpole to Frog by American Museum of Natural History
This board book is from their “Science for Toddlers” series and impressively high quality! Content for this book is informed by an AMNH expert herpetologist.
🌿🌻Lake Mamas & Babies by Stan Tekiela
This photo-illustrated board book shares facts about forest animals native to North America, including loons, bald eagles, muskrats, and toads. For a quick read, just learn the names for each baby animal (like chicks, kits, toadlets, and eaglets). For a longer read, you may learn about the number of babies, where they are born, how parents care for them, and how fast they grow.
🌿🌻Who’s Hiding on the River by Katharine McEwen
This lift-the-flap board book features short facts about many riparian animals, both in and along the river. Learn about swans, perch, pike, otters, beavers, and many more in this beautifully-illustrated book!
🌿🌻N is for Newt (illustrated by Kaya Kajfez)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about newts from around the world, including California newt & rough-skinned newt of North America.
🌿🌻T is for Toad (illustrated by Marc Pattenden)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about toads from around the world, including American toads.
🌿🌻Plip-Plop Pond! by Kaaren Pixton
This textless Indestructibles book for babies features beautiful illustrations of a pond ecosystem, including frogs, newts, swans, herons, turtles, kingfishers, muskrats, and dragonflies!
🌿The Lodge that Beaver Built by Randi Sonenshine (illustrated by Anne Hunter)
“The House That Jack Built” has proven to be a very popular poem to emulate when describing freshwater ecosystems for children and this was the third title in a year to make my list. Featuring beautiful poetry and stunning artwork, this book really tops the chart for using the familiar poem structure to showcase the place of beavers as keystone species in freshwater ecosystems. I particularly enjoy the way this story illustrated the transient nature of beaver dams, which can be burst and washed away by flooding rivers, leaving beavers to find a safe place to build a new pond. It’s also refreshing anytime I find a children’s book that doesn’t confuse beaver dams with beaver lodges.
🌿Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner (illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal)
With iconic illustrations by Chrisopher Silas Neal, this book explores the creatures and plants that thrive in and around the waters of a pond as a mother and child paddle a boat over the surface.
🌿Over and Under the Wetland by Kate Messner (illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal)
In the familiar format of Messner’s other books, a child and grandmother wander along a boardwalk, exploring the plants and animals of a swamp ecosystem in the Florida Everglades. Additional texts at the end of the book further describe the featured wildlife, along with an author’s note about the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary that inspired the book.
🌿Over in a River by Marianne Berkes (illustrated by Jill Dubin)
Like other books in this series, Over in a River is sung to the tune of “Over in the Meadow” and introduces ten animals found in or around river systems in the USA, including manatees, blue herons, water snakes, and salmon!
🌿The Boat that Ben Built by Jen Lynn Bailey (illustrated by Maggie Zeng)
This reimagining of classic nursery rhyme “This is the House that Jack Built” takes us on a journey down a river and past many different animals of the American Northwoods. One of my favorite things about this lovely book is that Ben’s mother is neither absent nor looming, calmly watching him from the shore as their dog walks alongside her. Even better, each animal featured gets a one-page spread about them at the end of the book.
🌿Being Frog by April Pully Sayre
This book includes photo illustrations of green frogs from a pond near the author’s home. The text is very simple and works well for toddlers and preschoolers alike. Green frogs are native to the Eastern United States, including the eastern half of Minnesota. Invite children to find and point to the frogs in each photo!
🌿At the Marsh in the Meadow by Jeanie Mebane (illustrated by Gerald Guerlais)
This book also parallels the poem “This is the House that Jack Built” as it explores the fish, bugs, plants, and other living things in the food chain of a marsh ecosystem.
🌿Water Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas (illustrated by Violeta Dabija)
This Minnesota author delights with rhyme and rhythm in a celebration of water in all its forms and functions!
🌿Maggi and Milo by Juli Brenning (illustrated by Priscilla Burris)
In this book, budding scientist Maggi receives a gift of frog-hunting year from her grandma and heads out to the pond with her border collie Milo to catch some frogs!
🌿There’s a Hole in the Log on the Bottom of the Lake by Loren Long
While this song will probably feel familiar, it’s worthwhile to memorize the modified tune in the back of the book before you start, because singing along is the best way to read this book. See how fast you can sing before you start mixing up the words in this fun cumulative song about a frog in a hole in a log!
Creative Art Opportunities
🐢Tearing blue and green tissue paper and sticking to tempera paint
🐢Sticky Molasses/Syrup Collage – tilt the paper to let the syrup run along the page
🐢Collage with crepe paper streamers
🐢Painting with blue and green and brown watercolors
🐢Textured painting with dirt or sand
Hands On Experiences
⛅️Explore a lifelike turtle figurine
⛅️Explore toy fish in water with a net
⛅️Explore a sensory table of water with fish, frog, and turtle figurines
⛅️Explores with stones and sticks in a sensory table of water
⛅️Explore a sensory table of water with cups
🌿Dig a trench or hole in soil/sand and fill it with water
🌿Have a picnic and/or read books next to a pond
🌿Look for frogs and turtles
🌿Observe ducks, geese, and wading birds at a lake or pond
🌿Drop leaves into a stream and watch them float away
Songs to Learn and Sing
“All the Fish” – Caspar Babypants
“Frog Song” – Charlie Hope
“Little Beaver” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
“The Frogs” – Caspar Babypants
“Swim Upstream (Salmon)” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
“Turtle Train” – Caspar Babypants
“The Great Lakes Song” – Lee Murdock
“The Bullfrog Opera” – The Okee Dokee Brothers
“Muddy Puddles (Frog Song)” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Crawdad” – Elizabeth Mitchell
“Little Stream” – Douglas Wood
“Cattail Marsh” – Douglas Wood
“Bein’ Green” – London Music Works
“Lily Pond” – Elizabeth Mitchell
“The River Song” – Claudia Robin Gunn
“Row Row Row” – Raffi
“1 2 3 4 5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive” – Nursery Rhymes 123
“Five Little Ducks” – Nursery Rhymes 123
“Six Little Ducks” – Susie Tallman
“I Just Want to Be a Frog” – Jessie Farrell & the Gumboot Kids
NIYN – Rivers, Lakes, & Ponds on Spotify
NIYN – Rivers, Lakes, & Ponds on YouTube
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so songs may change from year to year
Nature In Your Nurture 