It was a cold wet day and I was thinking what I could do to entertain the kids with enough creativity that I wouldn't also get bored.
At a birthday party recently, Andy got three little plastic frog toys which he is besotted by, so I thought we'd do some educational and fun activities about the life cycle of frogs.
This is a list of things that we did that were froggy related in case you dont want to read further.
1) Paintings of habitat and food for a frog
2) Playdoh life cycle
3) Making and playing with leap-frogs
4) Tiddalik the Frog story time
5) F is for frog and the life cycle worksheet
6) The Princess and the Frog DVD
7) Frog songs
First, we did a painting of the habitat. This led to discussions of what a habitat is, why certain types of animals live there, and others don't. This lead to discussions about food, and what keeps frogs healthy, which lead to discussions about pollution and what humans can do to help. This was ALL led by a three and four year old. Their knowledge astounds me.
Joey's frog pond with lots of flowers.
Andy's frog lake with a jumping frog, and the sun making a rainbow. There is also some flies and dragonflies to eat.
Next we spoke about how frogs are born, and made the life cycle out of home made playdoh onto a sheet of paper. Joey particularly liked making the eggs and kept pulling apart his tadpoles and adult frog to make more eggs. Andy loved retelling the story of the life cycle.
Getting crafty after lunch, we re-used (another major focus for our family at the moment reduce, reuse, recycle) a couple of soft drink bottles and made some leap frogs. These are really simple. Just chop the bottom off the bottle at about the half way mark and cut four "legs". Bend each one at the end to make a "foot" about 2cms (3/4 inch). When you press their backs, the legs will splay outward, and when released they will leap into the air! We used the hot glue gun to stick on a curly tongue and drew on some eyes with markers.
Before nap time, we read our copy of Tiddalik The Frog. It's a Dreaming story about a frog who drinks up all the water in Australia, and the animals have to try different things to get the water back out of the frog. I found a pretty cool youtube version here. Sophie and Ryan loved the animal sounds we were all making, and I just wish I could get Ryan's version of a kookaburra on film!
When the twins are asleep, we try to fit in some writing time for Andy. I printed off the F is for frog worksheet and the Life Cycle of a Frog worksheet and we did them together... for a little while. As is the ways of Andy however, his non-perfection got the better of him, and he ripped it up into 15 pieces while throwing a tantrum.
Yay for rest time. We popped on The Princess and the Frog, Disney movie and snuggled up on the couch.
When the twins woke up, we all sat on the mat and sung some froggy songs.
1) Der Glumph Went The Littler Green Frog
2) Five Little Speckled Frogs
3) Mr Froggy Went a Courting (this was not very successful with my kids)
4) Mr Frog... I can't seem to find a youtube on this, so I might just have to be creative and make one myself... one day. So, here are the lyrics.
Mr Frog jumped out of the pond one day
And found himself in the rain
Said he, "I'll get wet and I might catch a cold." AAAAAAARCHOOOOO (sneeze loudly)
So he jumped in the pond again.
Just before bath time, I caved and let the kids play froggies in the rain, the day didn't seem complete without being in the rain with the frogs. In the bath we used the little frogs on floating plastic plate lily-pads which was pretty cute and also we spoke about floating and sinking and why this happens.
Can you think of other Froggy activities? If you can, let me know and I will add them!
