Frog on a Blog!

I hadn't planned on looking at the lifecycle of a frog with the children, but when we were at my friend's house today, we dashed out inbetween rain storms and watched the frogs in her pond. There were about eleven in there; we heard a male frog croak too! Great balloons of frogspawn were pushing up out of the water! Later in the day we made frog pictures by cutting a pond out of shuny blue paper, adding bubblewrap with permanent marker dots on as the frog spawn, and some felt frogs and pond weed. They looked great!

Here are some froggy links to get you started exploring the lifecycle with your children:

• Small colour pictures to show lifecycle.
• Large pictures, and in fewer stages, with arrows, great for the wall or laminating for the children to use! Also on this page is writing paper and borders with frogs on!
• Lifecycle sheet with writing on explaining the stages.
• Tadpole to frog colouring pages.
• Frogs to colour.

My friend has a lovely set of felt manipulatives for the children to organise into the lifecycle, i couldn't find anything similar on the web, or any instructions to make one either so i have made up my own instructions and here they are!!!!

1. Print out this large frog picture, cut it out to make a template and cut two frog shapes out of green felt, you will need to simplify the sahpe of the feet a little (make them webbed!!).
2. Print out this sheet of tadpoles and froglets and cut them out to make templates, cut two shapes for each one out of felt; black for the tadpole, brown for the froglet with back legs and darg gren for the froglet with four legs!
3. Add detail with a permanent marker if you wish.
4. Sew round the edges with a thread of similar colour to the felt; i find embroidery floss pretty forgiving for this kind of project!!
5. Before you reach the end, stuff the shapes with a little filler, anything you have to hand, fabric scraps, cushion filler, shredded paper etc.
6. Sew up the ends securely.
7. Find some bubble wrap and add black dots to the bubbles with permanent marker to make frogspawn.

Hey Presto you have your own life cycle set made with your own fair hand..... school aged children will be keen to help with the sewing and cutting out too. I like to tell lifecycle stories by telling a magical little tale starting with the mummy frog........

The book 'A New Frog' is a really lovely story that repeats as it goes along, with beautiful illustrations.

Have fun frogging!!