The tadpoles in Aliya’s classroom are thriving now that we’ve changed to tap water and I’m helping keep the tank clean. Several of them have grown back legs, which may not seem that exciting except that they are the only tadpoles in the first grade that are metamorphosing (yes, that is a word). The other classes have been borrowing tadpoles from Aliya’s class to study.
I brought in a magnifying cosmetics mirror (do NOT look into one of those!) and it works really well to see the underside of the tadpoles and whether they’re growing legs or whether it’s another poop false-alarm.
The next problem is going to be that there may not be enough weeks left in the school year to allow them to complete their transformation. The other problem is what to do with any that make it to the end of the school year since I really don’t want to kill my babies. (If you missed my earlier post, they can’t be released into the wild because they might not be indigenous to Massachusetts and I’d be responsible for disturbing the local ecosystem.) I’m thinking about using them for breeding stock to supply next year’s first grade classrooms with their eggs. Budgets are tight, ya know.