frogs- preschool style

Frog day was super fun. We had several students out.  I thought it was because the roads were flooded and you had to go all kinds of out of your way to get to school.  The other classes has full attendance, so it must have just been a germ we were passing around.   Anyway.  Here are the books I read.  The book titled Frog is by Angela Royston. It's a really nice book showing the life-cycle of frogs.    Fantastic Frogs is a favorite at our house.  It's by Fay Robinson.   When Bee was potty training, I read this over and over and over.  This book is all about how many different kinds of frogs are out there.

After I read Frogs, we talked all about the life-cycles.  I had a poster from back when I taught 2nd-3rd grade.  I borrowed the little plastic frog life cycle models.  If I ever come across a set at a store, it's on my list.  Never mind, I just picked one up on eBay.  I also borrowed the nice life-cycle cards you see on the bottom.

Another cool thing I borrowed was this puppet.  This photo makes it look like a tadpole is eating a frog, but its a puppet that flips inside out to go from a tadpole to a frog. This isn't the exact same one, but here's something similar.  This particular one is from crocodile creek, but it doesn't look like they carry it anymore.

We sang 5 green and speckled frogs and used these little paper guys.  They are on straws and poked into a paper towel tube covered with brown construction paper.  This frog image is from Mailbox Magazine, but any clip art frog would work.  My guys are printed on green cardstock and laminated.

I sent the kids home with a copy of the pictures and the words to the song so they could count along with us at home.  10 points if you can spot the spelling error.  That's a total of three chances here for points.  I was pretty embarrassed. 

We sang a song with this large frog puppet, a cut out log, cut out lily pag, toy bumble bee, mosquito and flea.  You could easily rework the critters to use what you have.  My little bugs came from the party supply store.

The frog lives in the bog, he climbs on a lilypad and hops on a log.

He snapped a a mosquitoe.  He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a bumble bee,  and he snapped at me. 

He caught the mosquito.  He caught the flea.  He caught the bumble bee, but he didn't catch me.

I had wanted to buy enough of those sticky hands to play a game with catching paper flies but couldn't find enough sticky hands at the party store.  Then I thought about adding velcro to the ends of party blowers and to the plastic flies, but didn't.

Instead, I picked up some party blowers on clearance and we used them for this song. 

In the Pond (farmer in the dell)

The frog lives in the pond,

his tongue is oh so long. 

He reaches high to catch a fly 

and then he sings his song.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit (blow blowers)

Ribbit, ribit, ribbit,

Hi, Ho, watch him go

his tongue is oh so long.

I had this frog sorting activity ready to go, but we ran out of time. 

We didn't run too much out of time, I did end up reading an extra book.  You've gotta love The Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner.  It's so funny at the end.  The kids didn't seem to get it tough and I had to explain why it was funny, which totally doesn't make it as funny.  Oh well, I had a good laugh.

I set out this for our sensory tub.  I had some dried beans in the bottom to start but some in our class think they are for flinging.  This simpler box worked well too.

We worked on Mother's Day gifts, so didn't have a frog related craft. 

Also, I wanted to share this newer to me site that I've used the past few weeks and gotten several ideas from.  It's going on my favorite list.

I am linking up to some of these fine kiddo related parties:

Wednesday's A story + art = A Great stART  @ A Mommy's adventures,   Made by Little Hands Mondays @ delicate CONSTRUCTION Wednesday's Kids Get Crafty @ Red Teg Art's Blog, Tuesday's Show and Tell blog hop ad ABC and 123,  Tot Tuesdays at Delicious Ambiguity,  For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars