All about Amphibians

It’s amphibian week at the Cottage! Join in the fun as we explore frogs, toads, and salamanders! Try these activities and send us pictures of your creations and explorations!

5 Green and Speckled Frogs

This song is always a crowd pleaser during music time at the Cottage! Listen to the song above, and then create your own speckled frogs! With your child, find 5 small rocks outside. Have your child paint them green adding speckles, eyes, and maybe even a tongue! Allow the rocks to dry. Find a small log or twig outside, and reenact the song with your own green speckled frogs! This can be an open-ended activity for your child, or you could encourage counting practice! You can even introduce simple addition and subtraction concepts by asking questions like, “If there are two frogs left on the log, how many have jumped into the water?” or “If there are four frogs in the water, how many are left on the log?” Click on this link - Green Speckled Frogs - for an example of painted rocks from Mandy of the blog A Special Kind of Class.

Life Cycle of a Frog
Click on this link - From Tadpole to Frog - to watch a three minute video from Scholastic’s Watch and Learn Library all about the life cycle of frogs! Once you’ve watched the video, create a frog life cycle snack! Follow these steps using these ingredients or others that you have at home!
1. Begin by creating frog eggs with green grapes cut in half with a raisin on top of each half.
2. Make a tadpole using a spinach leaf and a whole green grape.
3. Create a froglet using a spinach leaf, whole green grape, and 4 carrots strips for legs.
4. Make the frog using green apple slices for the head/mouth, grapes cut in half for the 4 legs, and raisins for the eyes.

Create a Salamander Room
Watch The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer! In this wonderful story, Brian brings home a salamander and imagines that his bedroom becomes the perfect habitat for his new amphibious friend.

After watching this story, see if your little one can create a “salamander room” inside a cardboard box or plastic container. Go on an adventure to find water, food, and shelter to include in your “room” for your imaginary salamander. Talk to your child about habitats. What does our habitat look like? What do we need to survive? How is a salamander’s habitat the same or different compared to ours? At the Cottage, we sing a habitat song to the tune of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” It goes like this…
Food, water, shelter, space (clap, clap, clap)
Food, water, shelter, space (clap, clap, clap)
A happy habitat puts a smile on your face!
Food, water, shelter, space (clap, clap, clap)

Leapfrog Letters
On green construction paper or white printer paper, draw large lily pads - one on each paper. If using white paper, ask you child to color the lily pads green! Have your child cut out each lily pad and then trace or write one letter on each one. You could create the whole alphabet or just select certain letters (the letters in your child’s name, for example). Once each lily pad has a letter written on it, spread all of the lily pads around on the floor. Now you’re ready to play! Say a word and ask your child to hop to the letter that they hear at the beginning of that word. For example, you say the word “ball,” and your child hops to the letter “B.” Continue until your child has hopped to all of the letters!
Additional game ideas:
-Siblings race hop to the correct letter!
-Ask your child to hop to the correct letter and also provide a new word that begins with that letter!
-Say a word and ask your child to hop to the letter that they hear at the END of that word. For example, you say “pig” and your child hops to “G.”

Toad Toss
Using the lily pads from “Leapfrog Letters” (just flip them over), write a number (1-10) on each lily pad. Spread these out on the floor or ground. Find something to toss (e.g. beanbags, rolled-up socks, plastic bags filled with beans, balloons filled with rice or flour). Determine a tossing spot on the floor or ground and see if your child can toss the beanbag onto a lily pad. If a beanbag lands on a lily pad, the child gets the points written on that lily pad. Take turns tossing beanbags, and see who gets to 10 points first! Calculating point totals is a fun way to introduce addition skills!
Additional game ideas:
-For number recognition practice, simply ask your child to hop to the number that you say!
-This is a messy version! Play outside in the grass. Use a small ball instead of beanbags. Pour a thin layer of green paint into a flat pan. Before tossing the ball, dip it into the green paint. Take turns tossing the painted ball. See if you can get paint on each lily pad!