Ecolovies ~ Toad Houses... but Frogs are Welcome

Last night was a long night for me. It was the last day of Bad Changeover and after spending all morning on homeschool orders for this year, and all afternoon with my wonderful art class, I was tired. We had done pretty well with all of the days without dad time, but mama was running out of steam. I had shown Cyan my plan to make a toad house last week... but thought the project long forgotten. Well, last night, as I was sitting here vegging out waiting for bedtime to come, I saw her from the corner of my eye run in to get scissors. And then glue. And then she came in with a handful of rocks. What was she doing???

I walk out and she is cutting up a large sour cream container we found on the ground at the blueberry patch. There were pieces of it everywhere. She looked up at me with this wonderfully awake expression (considering it was about 7:30pm at this point and I was ready for bed) and said "Hey mama! Just making a house for frogs."

Apparently, she and her friend Emma had talked that day about the frogs that live in Emma's yard. One had taken up residence in one of the little houses they made in History class (taught by Emma's mom, Heather) and Cyan was determined to earn her own frog for a garden friend.

How can you be tired with inspiration like that???

I heated up the glue gun and told her that we needed stuff to make it with. And this is what she brought me:

Logan came in with a handful of ground bark and a bunch more bigger rocks, and we had all of the fixings for a great toad house.

Fixings of a great toad house:

1 garden pot or dairy container with a 'door' cut in it

1 glue gun and glue sticks

lots of rocks

a bunch of nature stuff

The project was fun. The kids yelling out where they wanted me to put stuff and me doing it as fast as I could (often getting rocks dropped in my lap because I wasn't doing it fast enough for Logan) trying not to burn myself with the glue gun.

We had one hiccup. Cyan reached over Logan to put something neat they found on the Nature Table, and she stepped RIGHT on the glue gun. She totally burnt her foot and to add insult to injury, she got hot glue between two of her toes and that burnt her too. Poor baby. She has to be the most accident prone child on the planet.

This simple craft was re-brought to my attention via 5 Orange Potatoes... which is a wonderful website for all kinds of nature crafts. I have loved looking around there whenever my inspiration is lacking. She always has something fun to do with nature!