Are They Tadpoles?

Yesterday, on Earth Day, we all went to a nearby creek on a quest for tadpoles. The new title picture at the top of the page shows Dad searching with the kids. See the bucket and net? You may ask, "Why would you kidnap innocent tadpoles from their natural habitat on Earth Day?" Well, we didn't purposely plan it that way. We've been talking about finding and taking care of tadpoles so we can watch them grow into frogs, and they happen to be pretty easy to find now in the spring. Also, they will have a better chance of survival in their new home with us--away from their preditors. Right? Well, we certainly hope so!
We caught lots of little wiggly stuff--six of the items we believed to be tadpoles. We even enjoyed a bonus find, a tiny turtle! He seemed to really like his home, so we let him stay!

The kids were so excited to catch and be able to keep these little critters. We brought them home, put them in our tank, and served them frozen organic baby spinach for dinner!

After all the excitement, I checked online to see if I could find exactly what KIND of frogs we might end up with. When I found some pictures to identify our little troop, I realized that we may have ended up with TOADpoles instead of TADpoles. This will be a fun science project. I hope it all goes well for the little taddies or toadies. Wish us luck!