One of my kiddos favorite things to do this time of year: head out to Chichaqua Bottoms Greenbelt for some frog catching. We have been coming out here since my son was three. I will never forget my first foray into frog catching with my kids. Polk County Conservation offered an activity called Catch-n-Croakers. My husband did not want to attend, so I hauled my then three and five year olds out to Chichaqua for some frog fun. The first part wasn't too bad. We listened to a conservationist explain the different types of frogs and the different sounds they made. She explained where we could look, and what we might find. I was totally unprepared for the second half, however! It was basically pitch black when we headed outside. Here I am holding on to my kids, a flashlight, a bucket, and a net wading in stinky pond water, catching NOTHING! It was pretty awful to me, but my kids loved it. So now we head out to Chichaqua during the DAY, which is so much better in my opinion:) Over the years we have had tons of fun, lost several boots in the muck, and caught all kinds of aquatic pond creatures.
I must admit, this time we only caught three frogs...poor indeed...but in our defense we pulled into the park behind three school buses from Des Moines. UGH! It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but there were several times I though some middle schooler was going to hook us with their poor casting skills! I will say, I was greatly impressed with the spread Polk County had for the school kids to do. They went round robin style to different activities. From what I could tell they had hiking, fishing, canoeing, pond study, and geocaching.
I found it funny that several of the kids asked why our kids weren't in school. To which we replied, "We homeschool." Their response, "You're cheating. You shouldn't be out here; you should be doing school." I found this particularly funny, since they were not in school either:). Whatever.
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