Frog Fest

Spring is a great time to celebrate this well loved amphibian with a library event aimed at children ages 2-7 years old.

Story - Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London, illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz  (Who cares that it is spring and not winter! This is my favorite frog book.  Older kids still laugh about the underwear joke even when they know it is coming.)

Station #1 - Toad Blocks
Create a frog picture using the library's large pattern blocks.  I found a frog picture using these blocks in an old Mailbox magazine (Kindergarten, Oct./Nov. 2011, page 38). I had it on the table for the children to look at.

Station #2 - Frog-tastic Color Roll
For this station, I borrowed my son's color cube from his ThinkFun Roll & Play game.  The children would roll the cube and then follow the directions for each color showing on top. 
Red: Stick out your tongue like a frog
Yellow: Crawl like a toad
Orange: Dance how a frog would dance
Blue: Jump like a frog
Purple: Find a partner and croak like a set of frogs in a frog chorus
Green: How many lily pads can you find around the room? (I taped up a few lily pad pictures around the room before the program began.)

Station #3 - Bug Toss
We converted our wooden bean bag toss game into a giant frog face. We set out lots of plastic bugs and other creepy crawlies for the children to throw into the frog's mouth.

 

Station #4 - Jumping Origami Frogs
I found the simplest directions I could find for this origami craft at Origami-Fun. There was light weight paper to fold as well as cardstock. The cardstock frogs jumped best. I also put out crayons to decorate the frogs. Thank goodness for my Key Club volunteer!  She rocked at helping the children and parents learn which way the folds needed to go. 

Station #5 - Paper Plate Frogs
Simple to make frogs:
1. Fold your paper plate in half for the mouth and face.
2. Cut out and attach the arms and legs.
3. Color and decorate.
Scissors, pens, and staplers were put out for easy assembly and decorating.

Reflections - This was an easy program to put together. The children who attended the event seemed to have a great time. The bug toss was a great hit. One group of boys had fun grossing out each other and their mothers with the assortment of insects, arachnids, and invertebrates we gathered. The parents were just as excited to fold origami frogs as the kids. While I did include a STEM feature with the pattern blocks, more could be done about a frog's life cycle to include more science. One thing that would have made this event over the top great would be to have somebody on hand with their pet frogs. Alas, I could not find anybody who was cheap or willing to do this for free.