Frog Activities for Frog Jumping Day
Today, May 13th, is Frog Jumping Day. It celebrates Mark Twain’s first short story which was originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” but was later renamed “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. It also goes by “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. People in Calaveras County still celebrate this day during the Calaveras County Fair and Frog Jumping Jubilee.
Have fun celebrating Frog Jumping Day with the following activities:
Share Mark Twain’s short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”.
Show students where Calaveras County is located (California).
Play a game of leapfrog – Students form a line. Each student kneels down and tucks their head down by their knees. The last student in line is the leapfrog and leaps over all the students in line in front of him. When he reaches the front of the line, he kneels down and the last student in line leaps next. Continue in this manner until everyone has had a turn to leap.
F is for Frog Lily Pad Jump
Copy the lily pad pattern below onto green construction paper. Label each lily pad with either an uppercase F, a lowercase f, or another letter of the alphabet. Make sure you have an F lily pad for each student.
Tell students that frogs love to jump on lily pads. Ask if they know how to hop like a frog. Have a student demonstrate. Spread the lily pads out on the floor and explain to the students that it is a pretend pond and they are going to pretend to be frogs.
Put on some lively music and have the students hop around the pond like frogs. When the music stops, they must hop on to a lily pad with an uppercase F or a lowercase f.
An option is to play this game similar to musical chairs and take 1 F lily pad away each time. If a student can not find an F lily pad to hop on, they are out.
5 Green and Speckled Frogs
Teach students the song “5 Green and Speckled Frogs” (if you are not familiar with this song, visit this youtube page). Use the patterns below to act out the song (make 5 copies of the frog pattern, sit all 5 speckled frogs on the speckled log, remove one for each verse).
5 green and speckled frogs sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious flies, yum, yum!
One jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool
Now there are just 4 green, speckled frogs.
(continue singing until there are 0 green, speckled frogs left)
Tadpole to Frog Mini Book
Teach students about the life cycle of a frog.
Suggested books:
Where Do Frogs Come From? by Alex Vern
From Tadpole to Frog by Wendy Pfeffer
From Tadpole to Frog by Jan Kottke
From Tadpole to Frog by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
Tale of a Tadpole by Karen Wallace
Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellog
King of the Pond by Carl Sommer
Have students create their own Tadpole to Frog mini book by cutting out the pictures below and putting them in order. Staple them together to form a book.
These activities are samples from my Letter F Alphabet Unit.
Additional Frog Books:
Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner
Any of the Froggy books by Jonathan London
Once There Was a Bull…(Frog) by Rick Walton
Jump, Frog, Jump by Robert Kalan
Graphics by www.mycutegraphics.com
