Frogs - Virtual Storytime

Today is National Frog Jumping Day! And it has a literary connection, being named in honor of all the frog-jumping contests spawned by Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (originally published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"). I've always found frogs to be a fun storytime theme, so decided this was a good reason to do it again.

Frogs, Toads, Aliens, and Dinosaurs!

I usually try to pick a different theme for my "regular" storytime on Friday, so I can expand my repertoire and experiment, but this week I was just too distracted to think of anything, so I stuck with the same "Frog" theme I have been doing on the Storytime Bus, though I did pick new books and spent a little more time on non-fiction.

As usual, we started with our welcome song, but then I did a longer introduction than usual, expanding it into a bit of a lesson about frogs using the wonderful non-fiction book All About Frogs by Jim Arnosky. I really like this book a lot, as it covers many things about frogs, including how they differ from toads, pictures of many different North American frogs, including tree frogs, showing how they vary in size, coloring, and markings. 

It also shows a few of the brightly colored poison dart frogs, which I supplemented with a number of photograghs of poison dart frogs I had copied and printed onto a single piece of paper as I find them truly amazing (there are also a couple of books just on poison dart frogs, one by Julie Murray, and another by Carmen Bredeson). This book also shows some of the things that frogs eat, as well as what eats them! Though I generally prefer photographs for non-fiction, the illustrations in this book are very realistic. I didn't read the text to them, but showed some of the pictures and talked about them. 

Since the last thing we talked about was what eats frogs, which included an alligator, we then did this really fun rhyme I learned from one of our volunteers that the kids seem to like a lot:

There Once Was An Alligator

There once was an alligator, sitting on a log.

(one hand & arm is the gator, on top of the other arm for the log)

Down in the water, he saw a little frog.

(look down)

DOWN dove the alligator!

(say this suddenly & loudly, while quickly "diving" down; 

it startles the kids, and they love it!)

Around spun the log!

(roll arms like log spinning)

SPLASH went the water!

(throw arms out)

And away swam the frog!

(make breaststroke motion with arms)

The kids are always startled when I suddenly cry "DOWN!" and dive down, then they giggle and really get into it. They like doing the motions, and I urge them to swim quickly to get away from the alligator, and often repeat 2-3 times as we keep running into more alligators. Depending on what book this follows, I may substitute "crocodile" for "alligator" and/or say "wide-mouthed frog" or "yummy frog" instead of "little frog".

Then we sang several verses of our story song to get settled for our stories, including stomp feet, clap hands, be seated, nod head, and say "shh". Our first story was Green Wilma: Frog In Space by Tedd Arnold. In this funny story Wilma is chasing a fly and is mistaken by aliens for their child who was playing in the pond. 

The aliens take Wilma into their ship and fly away. At first they think the earth's pond water had turned their dear Blooger green, but then they determine she is in fact not their son but an alien. They quickly return to earth to correct their mistake, much to Blooger's relief.

We followed this by singing everyone's favorite, "Five Green & Speckled Frogs", using my homeade finger-puppet glove, while they used their hands and fingers (for other ways to do this song, see "Five Green & Speckled Frogs, Five Ways"). 

Five Green & 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.

Now there are four green speckled frogs. Glub, Glub.

[Continue counting down to none.]

I preceded our last story, Tadpole Rex by Kurt Cyrus, with a quick lesson on the life cycle of a frog so they would understand what a tadpole was, using the same non-fiction book by Arnosky above. The title and cover of Tadpole Rex confused them, and some kept trying to correct me and tell me it was Tyranosaurus rex, so I made sure to pause an explain what was going on with the Tyranosaurus making the puddle, but the story was about the teeny little tadpole in the puddle, who was also named Rex. 

The story shows Rex develop from a tadpole into a frog, and his interactions with a few dinosaurs before deciding to stay safely hidden in his puddle, with just his eyes showing. A couple remained a little confused about the mixing of frogs and dinosaurs, so I think I will either save this book for slightly older kids and give it a bit more of a lead-in with a discussion about how there were frogs living at the time of dinosaurs in the future.

After that, we had a quick "pop quiz" about frogs to summarize what we learned, and then did our closing song and passed out stickers.

How It Went

This class has been a bit unusual compared to the previous two years. In the past, the kids were more talkative, restless, and inattentive at the beginning of the year, but have matured into good listeners by the end of the year. This class started out as exceptionally good listeners in the beginning, but now are getting more talkative and harder to control at the end of the year! But they are always so glad to see me, and almost knocked me over with a mob hug when I first walked in.

They did seem to enjoy the subject and the stories, but I don't think many fully appreciated either story since they weren't listening as well as usual. The loved doing the action rhyme with the alligator, though, and most liked doing the "Five Green & Speckled Frogs" song. When we talked about what frogs eat, they always say "Ewww" at the thought of eating bugs, and I tease them, saying that's what they were having for lunch or snack. And what do you know, after I finished, the teacher pulled out some celery, pimento cheese, and raisins for them to make "Ants On Log" for snack, so they did eat "bugs" after all!

Frog Storytime

I finished up my 2 weeks of Frog-themed storytimes with the Storytime-To-Go program this week. There are quite a few cute picture books featuring frogs out there, so this is a fun theme to do. I started each section by introducing the topic, discussing a few fun facts about frogs, and talking about our letter-of-the-day, "Ff". Then we sang our story song and read our first story. I used a number of books throughout the 2-weeks, reading 2 or 3 to each group.

The Books

In I Don't Want To Be A Frog by Dev Petty & Mike Boldt we meet a young frog who wants to be a cat, or a rabbit, or a pig, or an owl rather than a wet, slimy, bug-eating frog. His father tries to explain that he can't be any of those other animals, but it's the wolf who convinces him that being a frog isn't such a bad thing after all.  

In Ribbit! by Rodrigo Folgueira & Poly Bernatene a family of frogs is puzzled by a little pink pig who mysteriously shows up in their pond one morning, saying "Ribbit." They don't know what to think of this strange pig, and eventually consult the wise old beetle who suggests that maybe the little pig just wanted to make friends. But when they get back to the pond, the pig is gone.

AH HA! by Jeff Mack is a simple story told with only the pictures and two words "Ah" and "Ha". The audience will catch on and join in, particularly those who know their letters and can recognize the different combinations. 

Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert's version of The Wide-Mouthed Frog is a fun pop-up book with charming illustrations. However, I find it is too short, and kids are always disappointed that it isn't longer. I also found that very few of the kids really got the part about the frog making his mouth smaller.

John Strejan's version of the same folk tale, I Love To Eat Bugs!, is also a pop-up book. This one features African animals, and I really like that it is longer than the Faulkner version. This version ends simply with the frog jumping away from the hungry crocodile, though I do wish that it had a larger and more dramatic pop-up for the ending.

Little Green Frogs by Frances Barry is a unique book with pages that fold out instead of turning, forming the whole pond. The book shows the development of frogs from egg to tadpole to frog, with short and simple text, and is great for introducing metamorphosis to younger kids.

Froggy Goes To The Library by Jonathan London and Frank Remkiewicz is the latest book in the Froggy series. I'm partial to Froggy, plus I thought this would be a great way to plug the library, and reinforce appropriate library and storytime behavior. The kids can join in saying "Froogggyyyy" and "whaaat".

Karma Wilson's A Frog In The Bog (illustrated by Joan Rankin) is a fun little story with lots of rhyming words and counting, plus the chance to say ick, ew, yuck, etc., every time the frog eats something we would find gross. In the end, we learn that half-sunk logs are not always what they seem!  

Jump! by Scott M. Fischer is another book with lots of rhyming words, repetition and sequencing. First we have a bug sleeping on a jug, until he sees a frog and he has to "Jump!" to get away from. Then, the frog has to "Jump!" to get away from the cat, and so on until at the end a shark has to "Jump!" to get away from the whale. Or did he?  The kids can join in saying "Jump!" each time.

Jump, Frog, Jump! by Robert Kalan & Bryan Barton is another simple story with the repeating line "Jump, Frog, Jump!" that the kids can join in saying each time the frog needs to escape capture, either by hungry predators or curious kids. The story also builds with each page, much like The House That Jack Built.

The Caterpillar and the Polliwog by Jack Kent is the story of two unlikely friends who are each about to undergo an amazing change. Polliwog is at first disappointed that he doesn't change into a butterfly, but in the end he decides that he is happy to be a frog.

Big Frog Can't Fit In by Mo Willems is a great pop-up and pull-tab book about a big, long-legged frog who is sad she can't fit into the book. If only she were smaller, or more bendable. But, her friends have an idea! This is a fun book, but I found that some of the pull-tabs were difficult to operate and were easily damaged.

In addition, I supplemented these with a couple of non-fiction books, one to show the life-cycle of the frog with photographs of developing tadpoles and another to show some of the brightly colored poison dart frogs. I also had a photograph I found online of someone holding a handful of teeny-tiny baby frogs.

The Activities

The two activities I used the most were the "There Once Was An Alligator" action rhyme that has lots of movement, and the "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" song that I used last week in my regular storytime, "Hop On In To Storytime - Frogs". I mostly used the foam pieces on the magnetic board, but on the two days that the storytime bus was in the shop and I had to go in the classrooms I used my homemade storytime finger-puppet glove, both pictured below:

For more ways to do this song, see my "Five Green & Speckled Frogs, Five Ways" post.

When we needed a lot of movement, we did the "Croaky Pokey", inspired by Ethan Long's book of the same name. Sometimes we did it along with the book, and sometimes just on our own.

How It Went

The kids really seemed to enjoy this theme; I think because there are so many good books to choose from. The ones they seemed to like the most were I Don't Want To Be A Frog, Ribbit!, I Love To Eat Bugs, AH HA!, A Frog In The Bog, and Froggy Goes To The Library. 

After one reading of Froggy Goes To The Library, one boy said he wished we could sing and dance in storytime like Froggy did [we do movement activities all the time, but don't do as much dancing due to the small space]. I told him we could do that right now, provided that he lead since it was his idea. So he came up front and led them all in a Froggy dance, "Giggle, giggle; gaggle, gaggle. Wiggle, wiggle; waggle waggle."  Only it wasn't so much dancing as jumping around flapping their arms and legs and singing the words, but they were so cute and had such a good time doing it!

They all really liked the "Alligator" rhyme, loving the element of suprise when the alligator suddenly dived down after the frog and all the motions for the spinning log, splashing water, and swimming frog. Most of them really liked doing the "Five Green and Speckled Frogs", but a couple of groups were very lackluster about it; I'm not sure why. One minor issue with that song is that there are so many variations, some say "five little speckled" instead of "five green and speckled", some say "sat on a speckled log" and some say "sitting", some say "hollow log" instead of "speckled log", that we not all singing the same words all the time, and that threw some people off.

But most agreed that they were glad they did not have to eat bugs like frogs do!

Hop On In To Storytime - Frogs

Spring is in full swing, with summer not far behind! The sounds of crickets chirping and frogs croaking fill the night, and the ponds are full of eggs and tadpoles, so I thought this was the perfect time for a frog-themed storytime.

We started with our welcome song, then to introduce the theme I gave them clues until someone guessed frogs: "what lives both on land and in the water", "what is both good at jumping and swimming", "what eats flies and other bugs". I didn't have to resort to the dead-giveaway clue, "what says ribbit", but they all started "ribbit-ing" once it was established that frogs were indeed the theme.  

After that we sang our story song and proceeded to our first book, The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert. The illustrations in this book are really nice, and it's a pop-up, so that's always a bonus.  

There are several other versions, with different animals (African, Australian, South American...) and slightly different endings (some make the small mouth, some just have him hop away). I just wish this version was a little longer; the kids are always disappointed that it's so short and doesn't show more animals.

Since we just had a story with an alligator who liked to eat frogs, I followed with this fun action rhyme I learned from one of my volunteers that kids really seem to enjoy:

"There Once Was An Alligator"

There once was an alligator,

(hold up arm to be body and hand to be head & snapping jaws)

Sitting on a log.

(lay "alligator" arm on top of other arm)

Down in the water, 

(bend hand out and down from "log" slightly as though looking down)

He saw a little frog.

DOWN dived the alligator!

(quickly move hands down to floor)

AROUND spun the log!

(roll arms)

SPLASH went the water!

(throw arms out)

And AWAY swam the frog!

(make swimming motions)

For our second book, I chose a unique non-fiction picture book, Little Green Frogs by Frances Barry, that shows the development from egg to frog with very simply text and less detail, so good for young children. This book is unique, in that the pages open out, instead of turning, so that in the end the book forms the whole frog pond, complete with lily pads and water lilies. We talked about each step: eggs are laid, tadpoles hatch, tadpoles get bigger, back legs form, then front legs form, tail shrinks away, and they are finally frogs that breathe air rather than tadpoles that breathe in the water.  I also showed a picture I found online of a person holding a handful of teeny tiny froglets.

Then it was time to sing the classic, "Five Green & Speckled Frogs". I decided to use my finger-puppet glove with the song today, and have them imitate me using their fingers for their 5 frogs and opposite arm as the log (for other ways to do this song, check out my "Five Green & Speckled Frogs, Five Ways" post from last week).

"Five Green & Speckled Frogs"

Five green and speckled frogs,

Sitting on a speckled log,

Eating the most delicious bugs. YUM! YUM!

One jumped into the pool,

Where it was nice and cool.

Now there are FOUR green and speckled frogs. RIBBIT! RIBBIT!

(continue counting down to zero)

Our last book was I Don't Want To Be A Frog by Dev Petty and Mike Boldt, which I prefaced with a brief discussion of how sometimes we all might wish we could be someone or something else. In this story the little frog wishes he were a cat, or a rabbit, or a pig, or an owl; anything but a wet, slimy, bug-eating frog. As his father tries to explain that he can't be anything other than a frog, it is the fierce wolf who makes him appreciate all his frogginess in the end. This is a cute, funnny story and the kids enjoy naming the animals, and joining papa frog in reminding his son that he is, in fact, a FROG.

After that, it was time for our closing song and to pass out stickers.

How It Went

I had 14 very rambunctious kids today, who were very glad to see me but had trouble settling down. One little boy was really interested and enthusiastic about the stories, but was interrupting and repeating so much, that I had a hard time reading the story. But after calling him down a couple of times and reminding him that he could answer the questions, but then he needed to be quiet so I could go on with the story, he finally settled down a bit.  

There were a couple of kids who kept whispering to each other, and one who kept interrupting me to ask about stickers. I told her the first time we were not talking about stickers until after stories, then after the second time I told her that if she continued to be rude and interrupt the stories to ask about stickers that she would not get one. Sometimes I wish I had never started doing stickers and/or hand stamps, because some get hyper-focused on them instead of appreciating the stories, which is the most important part! I told her she was going to have to go to the end of the line and wait for her sticker because she needed to learn to be patient, and then we had a little chat about manners and patience, and what is most important at storytime.

Of the books, they seemed to like I Don't Want To Be A Frog the best.  They were okay with The Wide-Mouthed Frog, but the problem with that book was that by the time they were really getting into it, it was over. And I don't think they really got the part about why the frog puckered his mouth and tried to make it small, they just thought it was funny.  They really enjoyed the "There Once Was An Alligator" rhyme, but were a little "Meh" with the "Five Green & Speckled Frogs," which surprised me because most kids are familiar with that one and really like singing it.

Five Green & Speckled Frogs, Five Ways - Flannel Friday

This is a bit of a departure from my usual multiple rhymes/songs to use with the same set of felt pieces....instead, I have multiple props for the same song.

I was preparing for my upcoming "Frog" unit for the Storytime-To-Go program, and was surprised to see that the kit did not have "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" in it. Of course I had to remedy that right away, so in addition to getting the book version, I wanted to have some props for using without the book, and got a little carried away. So, here are five different ways to do "Five Green and Speckled Frogs":

"Five Green And Speckled Frogs"

Five green and speckled frogs,

Sitting on a speckled log,

Eating the most delicious bugs - YUM, YUM!

One jumped into the pool,

Where it was nice and cool.

Then there were four green speckled frogs - RIBBIT, RIBBIT!

(continue counting down until there are no green speckled frogs)

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(1) First, I started with a traditional set that could be made from felt, but I was pressed for time so I chose craft foam since it is easier to work with. First, I cut the frogs out using an Ellison die, then cut the log and pool out freehand, and quickly added details with markers, some pre-made foam bug stickers, googly eyes (because googly eyes always make things better), and magnets on the backs.

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(2) Next, I made this quick and easy tube story that I first saw at Miss Meg's Storytime, using free printable clipart she suggested from My Cute Graphics. First I scaled the frogs to slightly less than 2" wide, printed, and cut out. Next, I cut out a wavy strip from blue construction paper and attached it to a piece of brown paper, then cut into 2-inch wide strips.  

Then, simply wrap the strips around a paper towel tube and staple as closely as possible.  I put a staple in from each side, far enough in that the frogs would cover them once glued on. See the in-progress photo above. Then I drew some "most delicious bugs" and added some speckles and log details (which I had forgotten to do before I took these photos). So as each frog jumps into the pool, simply flip it down. Easy peasy!  

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(3) For the third way, we happened to have a bin of these plastic, jumpy frog toys, and I was able to find 5 that were green and had speckles on them. Luckily, I had a scrap piece of wood at home that still had bark attached to serve as the log, and I re-cycled the foam pool from above. These frogs don't really jump forward very well, they mostly just jump up, so it works best to have them slightly elevated above the pool so they can just jump and fall into it.

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(4) For the fourth method, I made a homemade storytime glove using an old glove I had laying around. I simply found some cute clipart frogs, scaled them down, printed, and laminated them. Then I just used scotch tape loops to attach them to the glove. I've used this same method before to make a "Five Little Bees" glove with its mate, and the tape holds surprisingly well! My other arm serves as the log, conveniently freckled and speckled!

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(5) Then for the fifth and final way, the book! There are several different versions out there, but the one we have at my library is by Priscilla Burris. The hardback is out-of-print, but Scholastic is releasing a board book version in June (2016).

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Enjoy!  These were all really quick and easy to make. The hard part is getting the song out of your head!

To see more Flannel Friday posts from other bloggers, go to this week's Flannel Friday Round-Up hosted by Kathryn at "Fun With Friends At Storytime", or visit the Flannel Friday Pinterest board for tons of inspiration. For more information about Flannel Friday and how to participate, visit the Flannel Friday site. Come back here next week, as it will be my turn to host the Round-Up!