Anecdote

A very quick story about a day in my class...

Today, around 12:25 pm a little girl comes to me and says " Madame, madame, come look!" She points at a wooden box with glass panes that is full of dirt and rocks. I look around inside and can't understand what she wants me to see.
I say to her " I see the box, I'm not sure why we have it." To which she says, excitedly, " But don't you see the frog Madame?"

At first I thought we were playing pretend, being a kindergarten teacher and all, we play pretend a lot. I've eaten my fair share of play dough cookies, cakes and pizzas this week, as well as plastic pasta and roast chicken. I've talked to a sick panda, who went to his Pterodactyl doctor to get medicine. And I've built a dinosaur out of blocks with another student.

Naturally, I was prepared to suggest we get a plastic frog and put him in his new home. To my surprise, when I looked again, there was a REAL frog in the box! A small brown frog, the ones you see in the grass sometimes. I'm no expert on amphibians, so I have no idea what it is, but a quick google search tells me it's possibly a wood frog. Don't hold this to me, I could be totally wrong.

I proceeded to have a shocked look on my face and ask where the frog came from. Another adult in my class who was there to help out with lunch said that the ECE (Early Childhood Educator) who works with me found it in the grass LAST WEEK and decided to make it our class pet. I couldn't process all of this information at once. There has been a frog in the class since last week??? Has it eaten? Does it have water? I suddenly turned in to Momma Frog and wanted to care for this poor thing! We put a foil pan in the box with some water, and then we hunted in our lunch boxes for something (literally ANYTHING) to give this poor thing. We ended up giving it some fruit pieces, but a google search says they eat insects. So, now my concern is, how long have we had this thing and how long has it not eaten??? I am seriously unsure what to do and I don't know how to bring it up with my ECE who is a 60 year old lady...

When I write my book, "A Day in the Life of a Kinder Teacher" this will for sure be one of the entries.