Frogs!

Making frog costumes

Our recent unit of study was FROGS! Jumping, hopping, kissing... what's not fun about frogs?
There's no shortage of books about tadpoles and frogs, given that frogs are the example most commonly used to demonstrate how amphibians go through metamorphosis. But we found a couple other charming books that made the kids giggle every time. I highly recommend The Frogs and Toads All Sang by Arnold Lobel, and What Did I Look Like When I Was a Baby? by Jeanne Willis. Don't worry if you can't sing the songs -- just make up any old tune. The kids don't care.

V-Man as a toad... there's something very fitting about this.

Inspired by the Frogs Sang book, we had a FROG PARTY. The kids made costumes by painting paper bags (we painted spots so V-Man could be a toad), and we drew lilypads on the deck by tracing round placemats (sneak in some counting practice here by drawing numbers in the pads). Then we made lemonade and I surprised them with a frog's favorite snack -- Ants on a Log (celery covered with peanut butter and raisins). We would have had a frog's other favorite snack -- gummy bugs -- but somebody ate them all after the kids went to bed one night...

Because MM was getting a little sick of her usual reading lesson (and so was I), I suggested she compose a story about a frog instead. She did, and we spelled it out together. I had intended to have her write an entire story, but then I realized it would take approximately three years to do so, so we didn't get further than "Starbright the frog could not find any insects. She had been hungry for five months."

The unfinished story of Starbright the Frog.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that Starbright the Frog was seconds away from meeting a handsome Frog Prince who would take her to live in his castle for ever and ever, so I'm not too disappointed in our stopping point.

Starbright on her lilypad, probably waiting for her Frog Prince

In a more academic pursuit, we spent a lot of time at the creek looking for frogs, which meant I did a lot of extra laundry, and which also meant we had a lot of wet sneakers drying on the porch. Between that and all the running strollers in the front yard, I fear our house looked a little red-necky for a while. 

Or maybe we just looked like the house of a busy, happy homeschooling family.

Ants on a log... a frog's favorite snack.