When I was growing up, one of my favourite things to do in Springtime was to walk to the local pond and try to catch tadpoles in a bucket. I remember one year having a bucket full of hundreds of them and watching in amazement as their tails shrunk and little legs began to appear! How magical!
So, when Springtime came around this year, Onetime and I went to the neighbourhood pond to find some magic too! Only we came prepared with this home-made Underwater Magnifying Glass so we could see even more cool things under the water!
These magnifying glasses are super easy to make and they really work!
Making the Underwater Magnifying Glass:
- a large can (we tried coffee cans and a Pringles can)
- a large clear plastic freezer bag
- one large elastic
1. Using a can opener, remove the bottom of the can.
2. Cover one end of the can with a freezer bag and hold it there tightly with an elastic.
3. Trim off the edges.
That’s it! I told you it was easy!
How the Magnifying Glass Works
When you press the magnifying glass gently into the water (plastic side down), the plastic depresses and forms a sort of lens that reflects the light’s rays and creates magnification! All of a sudden you can see things clearly underwater! And they’re bigger! So Cool!
Although we were on the lookout for tadpoles, we found some other really cool things using our underwater magnifying glass. There were snails everywhere at our pond! Can you see the air bubbles coming out?
We also saw lots of THIS! Never seen it before, and have NO IDEA what this is! If YOU know – I’d love to hear from you! It was pretty cool to look at though!
And we saw lots of tadpoles! They were HUGE! I think we will have some very LARGE frogs in our pond this year! It was really hard to capture one on camera though, as they were very quick. This one was approximately 5″ long!
Onetime (my 2.5 year old son) was tentative at first about this whole pond thing. We came prepared with rubber boots, but it wasn’t until he completely wiped out in the mud – and lived to tell the tale – that he actually started to have fun and not worry about getting dirty!
We had a great time learning about the pond! Another little terrific “Mini-Adventure” to check off our Summertime Bucket-List.
Our magnifying glasses stood up very well in preschooler hands – and we will use them again and again this summer I’m sure!
I would love to hear if you give this a try too! Be sure to share any pond study pictures with your little one on our Facebook page!
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Happy Pond Studying! (and don’t forget YOUR rubber boots!)
This is pretty cool. Thank you for sharing! I honestly would have never thought of something like this.
Thanks for dropping by Renae!
This is awesome! I can’t wait to try it with my crew. Thank you for sharing this great idea!
Thanks Jolanthe! I really appreciate you dropping by! Hope you have as much fun with this as we did!
I will be adding this to our nature walk for this summer. I’s something that we can do while outside and use while outside. Found you at We Love Weekends Linky