RIBBIT!

 

Froggies!

I kinda love frogs, from afar. I don’t want to touch them or anything, but they are quite cute. You know what else is cute? The frog books I picked for this storytime! I had a BIG book, a pop up book, and flannel sotries. Super awesome!

In the past for a spring storytime I read “999 Frogs Wake Up” by Ken Kimura and I loved it, super cute illustrations, but I didn’t want to repeat a title that close together. Luckily he has another book “999 Tadpoles” . Equally as cute and fun as the other book. I read that and the kids quite enjoyed it. I heard them gasp at the snake and whisper “oh no!”  when papa frog gets captured or they all fall (don’t worry, they’re ok). they really got into the story!

I also read “Wide Mouth Frog” by Keith Faulkner in pop up version because it should be read that way. The kids gasped at every turn of the page and the parents loved it. I liked the end where he makes his mouth all small and I tried to do the same as I was reading and I saw the kids sort of subconsciously purse their lips. hehe.

The BIG BOOK that I read was “Jump Frog, Jump!” by Robert Kalan.  This book was tons of fun but also a challenge! It reminds me of “there was an old lady” stories where it builds and builds as the story goes on but also has at least one constant. It’s a great story for us who perform storytimes to practice pacing and memory but also great for the kids to practice their memory because it gives you the opportunity to let them chime in when they remember the order of things on the list. They also get the chance to yell “JUMP FROG, JUMP!” a whole buncha times and who doesn’t like that?

So as if the awesome books we did weren’t good enough, I also did a “5 Little Speckled Frogs” flannel board using this video

 

I let the song play in the background behind the flannel board and the kids sang / clapped along and acted out the bits with me while I acted out the song on the flannel board. it was fun.

we also did a couple action rhymes:

Polliwog

Polliwog swims in the pond all day
Swishing his tail every which way
Swim, polliwog, swim, polliwog
How fun your life must be! 

Polliwog grows four legs one day
Becomes a frog and hops away
Hop, little frog, hop, little frog
How fun your life must be! 

Little frog sits under a blue sky
He jumps real low and he jumps real high
Jump, little frog, jump, little frog
How fun your life must be!

Ribbit!

Ribbit said the frog (make croaking noise)
With his great big eyes (put hands around eyes like goggles)
sitting on a lilypad (squat like a frog)
catching flies (reach hands out in the air)
“I have a sticky tongue it’s as fast as can be” (stick tongue out)
“And I catch flies…”
1, 2, 3! (stick tongue out to catch flies and count)

We did both of those rhymes a couple times each and they worked pretty well in getting out the wiggles.

All in all, I really enjoyed this storytime, we had lots of fun stuff going on AND we still managed a craft!

It wasn’t super complicated, I just cut out some frogs with the die cut machine and then grabbed some googly eyes and black pom poms and used some left over little white hearts and we made frog and fly collages.

 

Next week we have BEARS, RAWR!