Frogs – A Chorus of Colour

By Tracy Bigelow My son and I recently had the opportunity to preview the newest exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature called Frogs - A Chorus of Colour, thanks to Kids in the Capital!! The exhibit officially opened today, September 25th, however we had the chance to see it a day ahead of schedule!

I'll be upfront and say that our review is probably biased - my son (Luke, age 7) adores frogs and so no matter what, he would have given this exhibit two thumbs up. I, on the other hand, am a little harder to please. Yet, I too give this exhibit very high scores!

The most engaging parts of the exhibit were actually the frogs themselves - with almost 80 live frogs to view in very natural, native habitats! Most of them are species that we'd never get the chance to view in the wild. There were colorful dart poisonous frogs, tomato frogs and my son's personal favorite: Jabba the African bullfrog! They were, in every sense, the stars of the show!

As the mom of a home-schooled child, I appreciated all of the educational elements within this exhibit. The virtual dissection really brought back memories of my junior high biology class and my 7 year old son really played around with that feature for a while. He recently learned that humans have four heart chambers and so it was neat for him to learn that frogs have three.

There are recordings of various species of frogs for the kids to listen to; and my son especially appreciated the mini putt game where you need to dodge frog predators. Luke also loved the art station, and I was reminded of yet another school day memory - do you remember the paper origami frogs from grade school?! There are instructions to make one!

This exhibit totally captured my son's interest and engaged him from start to finish. It’s quite rare for us to say this - but there were no parts of the exhibit that we wanted to 'gloss' over! It is obvious that it was designed with children in mind, and yet all of the adults in the exhibit with us were just as equally enthralled as the children were. A definite winner!

I'm glad that this exhibit will be here till May 2014 - because we already have at least one more visit planned before it ends.