Peeking Red-Eyed Tree Frogs

I've done a lot of frog crafts over the years, but when we had our Jungle unit I decided I wanted to do something new. I did countless Google and Pinterest searches for frog crafts and there was one I saw that stuck in my mind. Unfortunately, after deciding to do that one, I could not find it again! I really wish I could give credit to my inspiration because it is a cute craft! I used the frog template from my hopping frog craft, but crossed off the body because we didn't need it. The kids painted the head of the frog green. (I mixed yellow and green paint to make a bright green color.) And they painted the two circles (the eyes) red.

When they were dry I cut them out and used a Sharpie to add black slits to the eyes. The kids glued the eyes on their frog, then glued their frog head to a leaf I had cut from green construction paper.

Then they glued orange frog feet to the leaf on the side of the head. These are the frog's front feet.

The idea is to make it look like the frog is peeking over the top of the leaf, with the rest of the body behind the leaf. For the most part, though, it just looked like a frog head with a leaf body. Oh well! Still cute!

 The kids also colored in a smile and nose and some other facial features.

I hung them above our jungle wall. (To see my dramatic play jungle from past years, read this post.)

Oops! Looks like a poison dart frog snuck in with our red-eyed tree frogs! ;o)
I also had the kids marble paint using orange, green and brown paint.

Then I cut out letters from the marbled paper to spell Welcome to the Jungle.

If you've seen this craft before, please let me know where. I'd love to give credit to that person!

Fun Fact: Red-eyed tree frogs can change color for many reasons, from a dark green to a reddish-brown.

Rock Frogs

Continuing with our Pond theme, we learned about frogs yesterday. My favorite! I got the idea for our craft from Ziggity Zoom but I didn't bother making the crowns. I also enlarged it a bit so the kids could use bigger rocks. First we gathered our rocks. The kids were very excited about this. Usually they are told not to touch the rocks (they are for landscaping), so when I told everyone to pick out one rock for art, they kind of hesitated. It was funny! Once they got the perfect rock (I didn't tell them what it was for yet), they painted them any way they wanted. I told them to make the flattest side the bottom so it would sit right.

When they were dry, I told them we were going to turn the rocks into frogs! I had cut out a bunch of legs from the template, in a variety of colors. I changed the back feet a little to make them look webbed and I just used construction paper instead of craft foam.

The kids picked out which body they wanted and, using a glue dot, they attached their rock to it. Then they used glue dots to attach eyes to their rock. And a frog was born.

I think it would be cute to attach little pom poms to the rock and then put the eyes on the pom poms, but this worked well, too.

Fun Fact: A group of frogs is called an army!

Hoppin' Frogs

Today's color was green and I taught about frogs. But not just any frogs. Red-eyed tree frogs. My favorite. animal. ever. Since I love frogs, I've done many froggy crafts over the years. But this time I decided to do something new. So I searched the internet and found this. First I drew a frog. Well, half of a frog on a folded piece of paper. Then I cut it out and opened the paper and traced that frog onto another piece of paper.

The circles on the bottom are the eyes. Then the kids painted the frogs, and of course I put out a bunch of colors.

In the afternoon when they were dry, I put out strips of accordion-folded paper and some frog feet.

The kids glued on the legs, feet, and eyes. Here's how they turned out.

When I hung them on the wall, it looked like they were hopping!

They turned out better than I thought they would!

Fun Fact: Red-eyed tree frogs rest with their legs pulled in tight and their eyes closed. When a predator approaches, the frog opens its eyes and puts its legs out, revealing a bunch of color which startles the predator.

**I linked up to Show-and-Share Saturday,  The Sunday Showcase and ABC'S Blog Hop!**