During our pond theme I wanted to make some sort of prop for my toddler circle time. I’ve mentioned in one of my most popular videos that props are one of the best ways to get toddlers engaged in circle time. When we made our Itsy Bitsy Spider puppets, our toddlers had so much fun holding them while singing the song. So I decided to have our toddlers make their own frog puppets that could be used while singing “Five Green Speckled Frogs”. Another hit! Each step not only is fun, but it builds important toddler fine motor skills.
Paint, thinned with water (I used blue and yellow, but you can just use green if desired) Golf balls Frog printable (scroll down to find free printable) Container with sides (like a shoe box sized plastic container)
When you download the frog printable packet, you will only need the sheet with the large frog. You can save the rest of the printable for our frog and log activity, which I will share in a future post. Place paint into a container and make sure it’s thinned with water or else it will be too thick to see the details of the frog. (Trust me on this. It took a few frogs to realize we needed to thin the paint.) Once the golf ball is coated with paint, use a spoon or scoop and transfer it into the container with the frog printable. If more golf balls are desired, place another one in the paint container, coat it with paint, and drop it into the bin with the printable. A fun art activity that is used with literacy and music! Then, it’s time to start moving the golf balls around. It takes concentration to coordinate the movements, moving the golf balls around the bin, back and forth. My little friends love to move everything around in our classroom! It’s as though he hopped right out of our pond sensory bin. We get side tracked quite a bit in our toddler classroom!
White lunch sacks Yellow liquid watercolors Blue liquid watercolors Paintbrush
This part is super easy. Simply provide containers of blue and yellow watercolors and invite the children to brush both colors on to the lunch sack. Watching the 2 colors merge is a great color mixing experience! To add more fine motor to this part of the activity, replace the brushes with droppers. Open the lunch sack and glue the frog to the flat bottom part. This way when an arm is inserted into the bag, the hand can wiggle the lunch sack making the frog move. Then, sing “Five Green Speckled Frogs”! More toddler activities: 15+ Toddler Spring Activities Easy Rainbow Suncatchers A Collection of Toddler Color Activities You can find the frog printable in this packet (click on photo for link): Here is my Privacy Policy
