Little Speckled Frog

A simple craft from things you likely have around the house, this hopping frog is great as a stand-a-lone craft or a jumping off point (see what I did there?) for a mini unit on frogs!

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What you need:

• paper (thicker paper is best)

• two paper cups

• rubberband

• crayons/makers/paint

• scissors

• school glue

• duct tape or stapler

• optional: cardboard

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Frogs are totally worth spending some time learning about. You can tie them into just about every area of learning! Here's a quick over-view, but be sure to check out all the links for direct resources at the end of this post:

Art - this project! (it also involves a bit of engineering)

Science - discuss metamorphosis with the frog's life-cycle

Music - there's a TON of frog themed songs out there, at least one of which involves counting

Literature - frogs are a popular character in all sorts of kids books

Gross Motor - you are limited only by your own creativity on a million different hoping and jumping frog games

But for now, lets get crafting. As with all crafts, you can adapt this based on your child's age and ability by what steps you have them do and which ones you do yourself. My son is still working on drawing and cutting skills, so I took on most of those and let him do the assembling, coloring and playing!

I started out by drawing out our frog parts and handing them off to my kiddo to color. I made a large circle for the body by tracing the duct tape and then free-handed some legs. I traced some smaller circles for the eyes and made a long rectangle for the tongue.

While he worked on coloring, I got our jumping mechanism ready. To do this, take one of the paper cups and from the rim toward the base, cut two flaps on opposite sides, about one inch wide and half the length of the cup. Bend these flaps back toward the bottom of the cup.

Then take your rubber band, loop it over one of the flaps, twist it once so it makes an x and then loop it over the other flap.

Next, secure the flaps to the base of the cup by either stapling them or taping them. Now, when you place this cup on the other one and press it down and release it, it will fling into the air! Optional - glue your non rubber band cup to a circle of cardboard to make a lilly pad (and a more stable base).

Once we colored in the parts all the way, we added green spots with our dab-a-dot marker so we could have a "speckled frog" to fit our song (see our stirring rendition below.) My son also wanted to color the cups - as you can see this wasn't super successful and the green mostly ended upcoming off on our hands, so just putting that out there.

Then, cut out all the parts for assembly. For the tongue, color your long rectangle red on both sides and wrap it around a pencil or marker to create a bit of a curl.

Assemble your frog and securely attach him to the cup (I used tape as we play rough around here.)

Now he is ready to jump! Here is our's in action - my son wanted to make a how-to video.

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Alright! Now, as promised, time for some other fun resources!

Music:

• Five Little Speckled Frogs (here's our version)

• Froggie Went A Courtin' (If you don't know Laurie Berkner - you should! She's great!)

• Little Green Frog (f you don't know Cosmic Kids - you should. It's awesome)

• The Frog Song

Movement:

• Frank The Frog - Cosmic Kids Yoga, we are HUGE fans of Cosmic Kids here

• Toss couch cushions around the house about 2 feet apart - they are now lilly pads. frog hop from one to the next. Make it a game by putting puzzle pieces on one end and the puzzle on the other and hop over one piece at a time.

• Put cereal, popcorn (for kids over 3), or other small food that sticks to a wet tongue on a plate. Have your kid pretend to be a frog catching bugs.

Science:

• Frog Life Cycle - Times Kids

• How a Frog Becomes a Frog - PBS kids

• Tree Frog Video

Literature:

• City Dog, Coutnry Frog - a bit of a sad tale by Mo Williams

• Frogs - sciency book by Gail Gibbons

• Toad in the Road - a silly book by Stephen Shaskan

• Frog and Toad books - always classics by Arnold Lobel

• Wide Mouthed Frog - pop up book by Keith Faulkner

• I'm a Frog - Elephant and Piggie book by Mo Williams

Enjoy! And please tag me in your fun on Facebook and Instagram (@ThisMomMakes) so I can see what you've been up to!

#Nature #NaturePlay #Frogs #MiniUnit #AnimalCraft