Froggy, froggy, green and brown...

Another post with some accumulated activities we did with the frog theme. 

The title of the post is from the song Frogs in School by Julie Austin and it's a favorite around here.  It's on her Fandagumbo CD.  You can find the lyrics at http://julieaustin.com/frogs-in-the-school. 

Bubble Wrap Sensory

Bubble wrap is used quite frequently around here.  They love it and so do I.  I can sit and pop those bubbles and I will definitely have a bit of bubble wrap around for my school-agers next year.  One activity we love and have done multiple times is dish soap and paint on bubble wrap.  This makes some cool prints.  I chose to use just blues and greens this time to make a "pond" to go with the 5 Green and Speckled Frogs song and manipulatives so we can keep the foam here for other uses. 

Froggy Sensory With Hair Gel

During our bug week they really enjoyed finding the bugs in a different spot/to be used with different materials each day so I've done the same with our frogs.  In this picture I put them with hair gel and mancala beads.

Frog and Flies Addition

The Mailbox Preschool/Kindergarten Magazines have centerfold games that can be laminated and used.  This is one of them.  Each child rolled a dice and placed that any flies on the mat.  Very simple addition...great for 3's and 4's!

Sight Word Booklet

These are nice little sight word booklets.  With H. here were found the word "see" on every page.  With K., she was able to read it all on her own.  This booklet is one of several printable booklets from the Mailbox Publication High Frequency Word Booklets.

Bulletin Board Strips

Did another more "formal" activity with our frog bulletin board strips.  This time we played an I Spy where the children guess the number I was thinking about.  I used number formation phrases such as "curve around and slide to the right".  I also chose a number and covered up the number before and the number afterward and the children took turns telling me what those numbers word.  Simple, beneficial!

Frogs on Logs 

Another Mailbox publication activity.  I used their estimation sheet but chose to make logs out of simple construction paper and use our frog manipulatives.  They suggested using green pom poms.  Something similar can easily be made on your own.  I love that picture on the left.  Her estimation was the same as the actual measurement and she let out a huge "whoop!"  LOL  

Frog on a Log Vowels

(Picture isn't grand, sorry!  Sent home both children's work before noticing that none of the quick snapshots turned out.)

Initially I planned to have them use these order by size frogs from to match frog rhyming pictures but chose at the last minute to reinforce those short vowel sounds.  For the toddler I simply used numbers and number dots but focused putting the frogs on the log from biggest to smallest, which he did without a problem.  :-)

Shades of Green Froggies

All the children had such a look of concentration when they were doing this activity.  :-)

This was right up the alley for T. and his sense of order.  :-)

The end product wasn't what I'd call beautiful but the process was great and they did enjoy it.  My goal was to have a project that would dry and go home the same day since it was the last day of school.  If I just let them have free for all with the sponge applicators like I would normally do, they wouldn't dry before noon.  :-)

It incorporated art (shades of color-mix with the children), fine motor and eye-hand coordination activity. 

Lily Pad Number Word Match
www.makinglearningfun.com

This was a great way to see which number words K. actually recognized.  Though I made two "trays", one with larger numbers and one with smaller numbers, only K. really knows a good portion of number words, as she's a bit older so I was watching for decoding practices for H. but K. actually sounded the words out for him.  Simple, easy, and they seemed to enjoy this, especially after T. gave them a frog after they completed each lily pad.  :-)  Metal trays from a dollar store and magnets on the back of the flowers.

Watch Me Grow: Frog

 This is a lovely book! Very informative, great illustrations! Better yet, the frogs I purchased from Dollar Tree matched closely to the frogs in the book!

Also want to remind you to check out the following sites for frog themed activities.  We've done several from them that I didn't post about.

* Frog Frolics Activity Kit from Homeschool Share

(The word find from this kit.  This is one way we complete word finds.  :-)  Colored chips vs. dry-erase markers)

* Frog themed activities from Making Learning Fun

(I had only printed the background frog for the toddler to match the pieces but I ended up going back and printing the background for the other two as well, this puzzle was harder than we thought it was going to be!)

* Frog themed activities from Kidssoup (membership fee required...well worth it!)

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Non-themed activity:  these last few days I've been asking for suggestions of activities they would like to do again.  This was one of the suggestions they gave me.  :-)

And a lovely gift from one of my families!

5 Green and Speckled Frogs!

Of course we started our frog theme out by singing 5 Green and Speckled Frogs.   It's very much a favorite and easy to learn. 

I chose to use number frogs from SparkleBox.  This was perfect for the toddler in the group, though they all enjoyed it.  Construction paper logs, laminated frogs, and blue foam pond.  (After these last few days of doing this song T. can name 3 out of 5 of the numbers and can point to all of them when asked where a specific number is.  He also has come quite a ways in ordering the 5 all on his own each time!) 

We also looked at pictures of frogs and found out that not all frogs are green and speckled!  :-)  We learned that some frogs, like the red eyed tree frog in the picture on the right has bright colors and bright colors usually means "Watch out!  I'm poisonous!"   A site to get you started on kid friendly photos and facts is Kid Zone.

We pulled out our Animal Habitats game again, the picture was when we did the farm/zoo animal venn diagram back in February.  And figured that even though there wasn't a frog on every mat, there could be.  Frogs are found all over the world, except in the Artic, Antarctica and Greenland.  And they can be found near any (actually, near every) fresh body of water.  They prefer ponds and marshes because the water doesn't move as quickly.  :-)

Children created their own frog habitat picture and frog to go with it.  We chose to just use the frog pattern that was on the same page as our life cycle (The Mailbox) to save paper.   Oil pastels and tempera water cakes were our choice of media for this project.

The following verse of a song from Songs That Teach, we sang today.

Habitat Song

A habitat is a place to live.

A habitat is a place that gives.

A habitat is a special home

to plants and animals-their very own.

Frog Life Cycle

This from a Mailbox Publication (TEC #845).  Children cut out the life cycle circle and trace that circle onto green paper and cut that out as well.  Tracing and cutting are definitely something they will do quite a bit of in most Kindergarten classrooms so I want them to experience holding a pattern and tracing it.  The flower was just made with oil pastels. Did you know that a female frog lays up to 4000 eggs at a time?  Wow!  This is also where I slipped in the fact that Frogs are amphibians.  Amphibian means "2 lives".  The frog begins as eggs/tadpoles/froglets in the water but when they are full grown they live on land.

Counting Frogs Clothespins
 

Making Learning Fun
Many of their counting strips have items that are randomly placed on the strip vs. ordered left to right and top to bottom.  :-)  This makes it a nice challenge for older children but quite difficult for younger children so I provide a dry erase marker to use on the laminated strips so they can mark off the flies as they count them.  Then they know what they have counted and what they haven't.

Water Play with Frogs and Lily Pads

 These frogs are from Dollar Tree. I simply created circles from green foam and snipped a triangle out of the side.


Frog Jumping

The Dollar Tree has a nice teacher's section.  Often I can find theme related bulletin board strips.  Unfortunately I don't really have bulletin board space here at home, like I did in center-based programs, but we use them for other activities.  :-)  Here the child put their frog on a number and we rolled the dice and jumped forward and backwards.  This was to reinforce the +, -, = signs. 

Blurry picture but I wanted to have on record T.'s 1:1 correspondence here during free play time.

Consider the free Frog Frolics pack from Homeschool Share!  Lots of goodies there that we are incorporating into our days.  Rhyming with Frog, Prey/Predator, Frog Maze are three we've done so far and there are quite a few more that we plan to do over the next couple of days.

Frog Maze

This time I chose to have them place mancala beads on the flowers instead of using dry erase marker.  Just tweaking it a bit to keep interest and incorporating that pinching/two finger pick up motion.  The kids always enjoy working with mancala beads.  :-)

Camouflaged Frogs

Yep, can't even see the frogs in there.  :-D A side note, I think the favorite sensory material over the last 6 years has been a dried bean mixture.  There is just something about this mixture that they don't get tired of!

Frog Egg Sensory

Deborah from Teach Preschool recently posted about water beads and they are a favorite here also.  So in that post, she mentioned using them with shaving cream.  Oh!  We hadn't done that yet so I decided to do that today and it worked out perfectly.  One child said, "Look, frog eggs!"  So our conversation went off from there.  Neat!  Wasn't even planned.   From awhile back we had rainbow water beads, however, sitting over time caused them to turn that brownish purplish color...worked out nicely for our "frog eggs".  :-P

Frog Color Words

We started out with K. reading a very old Weekly Reader about Frogs and their colors.  Perfect sight word practice for her and since it's been an odd couple of weeks and our frog activities are being spread out, it was a good review of the frog life cycle.

Then K. worked on the clothespin color word match from Making Learning Fun and H. and T. worked together with me using the other frog color match.  For whatever reason, I can't find this match in any of the logical places it would be on my computers, nor can I find it in a several of the searches I did on the internet.  So, I'll keep looking as it's a very nice activity for toddlers and young preschoolers to introduce the color words.  If you know the link to this color/frog-lily pad matching activities...please leave a comment!  For some reason I was thinking it was from a homeschooling mom. Thanks!

Froggy Painting

Every once in awhile I like to do a step by step painting/drawing project.  It brings their attention to the shapes in making a picture and helps with their idea that they "can't draw".  Below is a close up of one of them to show our "flies".  :-)  Black beans and white crayon wings.  They enjoyed this simple project. 

Tally Marks

This was very well liked.  I had one child place the foam lily pads around the living room and another child went around and put a frog on each lily pad.  Then each child was given a handful of craft sticks.  They flipped the lily pad over to see the number, stated it and then created that number with tally marks.  We use the Tally Mark Poem that goes like this...
1, 2, 3, 4
Number 5 shuts the door.
6, 7, 8, 9
Number 10 makes the line.

And to end the morning on a positive note...

A yummy lunch was set out for me...including frog soup!  :-)

F is for...

Here are a few end product pictures.

F is for feet!

Planned on putting a poem on the right side, that's why it's off center but I really couldn't find one that I liked that would fit in the space left and not look tacky so...if you all know of any great poems that would go along with a project like this...please let me know!  K. Sponge painted the white cardstock to make it look like sand.  Idea came from www.funhandprintart.blogspot.com.  It's the site where  I got most of my monthly handprint project ideas last year, where I put the child's picture on one side and we printed the handprint on the other.

F is for frog!

Which really ended up being a "toad"...which we have a few around here each summer in our sand box.  This idea was initially from The Mailbox preschool publication but I was reminded of it from Stacy at Share & Remember, http://shareandremember.blogspot.com.  Thanks Stacy! 

F is for Fold.

Ha!  Today is "Free Friday" where we finish up projects (I only have two children here besides my own on a regular basis on Friday), switch toys, do the things we didn't get to, etc.  I don't plan any new activities.  I have a habit of doing towels last and then leave them in the dryer until I do the next round of laundry.  Well, I emptied the towels from the dryer onto my bed and did my round of laundry for that day ending with towels.  We never got to the towels on the bed so I ended up putting them back into the dryer with the other load.  So I said to K. today, since she was really just following me around instead of playing, if she wanted to help me fold some towels, since F is for fold.  She got all excited and said "Yes!  I know how to fold towels!"  So she came with me and I grab the first armful to take it to the couch.  She walked in behind me and put her hands on her head and made a big exclamation when she saw how many towels there were!  My husband and I enjoyed that one!  She sure does know how to fold though! 

Last week we did mixing color pages throughout the week.  So we did L is for Lizard, L is for Lion, L is for Lollipop.  Here's the simple book (love my new binding machine!  Been keeping work here just so I can bind them in a book to send home!)

Front Cover:  They colored the paint brush their favorite color and cut the paint palette out if they were able.

2nd page:  the song we sing

3rd-6th pages are the two colors and the mixed color on the L picture we were focused on that day.  When we do activities like this I always allow for free exploration with the paints when they are completed with the task I asked them to do. 

 

 Have a good weekend!  Next week we move to the letter E.