Learning About Frogs

Having graduated with a BA in biology I feel that it is never to early to spark your child's interest in the world around her.  This being the last day of frog month I thought I'd tell you about our frog unit.  I was actually a little surprised how much my daughter enjoyed learning about frogs.

I introduced the unit by reading the book From Tadpole to Frog (How Things Grow) which has plenty of pictures and simple text with my daughter.  My daughter loved it.  We must have read that book every night for two weeks, which for my daughter is amazing.  Normally she wants a new book every night.

We also visited the National Geographic Kids website and read about Red-eyed Tree Frogs.  There are a variety of pictures for your child to view while you read them the factoids about tree frogs.  The site also has a video so she can see the frog in action.

To reinforce what she'd just learned in her book and on the website she colored the life cycle coloring page while I talked with her about what she was coloring.  And because she was learning to write the letter F at the time we also colored the F is for frog coloring page.

In order to round out our unit on frog we sang Five Green and Speckled Frogs and played the Leaping Lily Pads.  The lily pad game is easy to play and a good way to encourage your preschooler to burn off a little energy.  Gather up some "lily pads".  We used pillows.  Scatter them about the room and have your child jump across the "lake" without falling into the "water".  My daughter liked to spread the "lily pads" further and further apart to see how far she could jump.

Five Green and Speckled Frogs
Five* green and speckled frogs
Sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs
Yum!  Yum!
One jumped into the pool
Where it was nice and cool
Then there where four green speckled frogs
Glub.  Glub.
*Count down until there are no green speckled frogs

 Something else that looked like fun, but I never got around to trying myself, is creating a frog puppet.  DLTK has all the information you need to complete the craft.  Also if you'd prefer a book that matches more specifically the focus of the video and coloring pages you might consider Tree Frogs (Let's Investigate).  I've not read it myself but it is the same age target as the one I read with my daughter.  If you do try it let me know how it works for you and your child.

Whatever activities you choose for your frog unit (emphasizing the color green is a good choice if you're still working on colors) I hope you enjoy sharing the wonders of nature with your child.