Welcome to the classroom! We love to play, learn, create and sing together in the classroom, and we’d like to encourage our classroom friends to keep learning and playing at home once Caitie’s Classroom is over. We’ve put together activities and resources so the playing, learning, creating and singing doesn’t have to stop once Caitie says goodbye. Try these out at home or in your own classroom, and have fun!
In this episode of Caitie’s Classroom, we are learning about and exploring with frogs! Frogs live in water and on land. They can hop and swim, and they love to eat bugs. Yum yum! Read on below for tips and ideas for how to recreate our froggy fun in the classroom at home.
Catch The Bugs!
Frogs catch bugs using their sticky tongues! Caitie is pretending to be a frog and is using her frog mask to catch bugs in the classroom. You can try this activity at home too!
To make our “sticky tongue” we used a simple birthday blower and taped a strong magnet to the end of it. Then we cut out pictures of bugs and taped another strong magnet to the back of each of the paper bugs. You can recreate this at home a number of ways.
- Instead of attaching a magnet to a picture of a bug, just place the magnets on a table and pretend they are bugs.
- You can also try this without magnets. Use a piece of double sided tape, or put a loop of tape at the end of the birthday blower.
- If your little one is not able to blow to make the birthday blower go, or if it is just too tricky, then skip it! Try using a piece of string, or a ruler, or even just your finger and the bugs can be little pieces of torn paper. Put a loop of tape at the end of whatever you are using to catch your bugs.
There are a number of ways to make this a fun learning experience as well!
- Count how many bugs you catch.
- Make your bugs different colors to practice color vocabulary.
- Write letters or numbers on your bugs to practice letters and numbers. Then try spelling a word or putting the numbers in order once all the bugs are caught.
- Have a few cutouts of frogs or you can use toy frogs if you have them. Once all the bugs have been caught, divide up the bugs between the frogs so each frog has the same amount. This is also a great lesson in sharing!
ABCs
In this episode we play ABC Hop! You can recreate this game at home by writing out each letter of the alphabet on a piece of paper and laying them out. Then replace some of the letters with frogs or a green piece of paper. Follow along and sing the song with your little one!
There are lots of different Super Simple versions of the alphabet for lots of ABC practice:
Visit our Super Simple ABCs YouTube channel for lots of great ABC videos:
Super Simple ABCs
Tobee!
- In this episode we get a special phone call from our friend Tobee! He shares with us some interesting facts about frogs. Watch more videos with Tobee here: Sing Along With Tobee
- Get your own Tobee plushie in our shop.
Discovery Bin
Caitie explores colors and sensory play with the discovery bin! Our discovery bin is made with blue water beads. Water beads are a super fun sensory material that can last a long time. You can recreate our discovery bin at home using any kind of sensory material you like, or even just using water. Our lily pads that we play with are cut from fun foam and will float on water, or you can laminate a piece of colored paper. Here are the basics for our froggy fun discovery bin:
- Place different colored frogs in the discovery bin. If you are not using anything wet as your sensory material you can cut out pictures of colored frogs, or try laminating the paper to use with wet material. Really any kind of plastic colored item can be used to represent a frog in the discovery bin.
- Have your little one search through the bin and find the items.
- Count the items you found.
- Place your lily pads on top of the discovery bin (or just place it beside the discovery bin).
- Sort the colored items onto the correct colored lily pad.
This froggy fun discovery bin is also a great place to act out the song Five Little Speckled Frogs.
Five Little Speckled Frogs
Five Little Speckled Frogs is a great movement and counting song. Encourage your little ones to hop like a frog, rub their tummies and sing along with “yum yum”.
Using your toy/paper frogs and lily pads, try acting out the song with your discovery bin.
We also have a great Five Little Speckled Frogs resource to bring this song to life. It also helps introduce subtraction to little ones in a fun way.
Counting Frogs
You can practice counting with just about anything! Today in the classroom we are counting frogs. This is also an active activity – we hop like a frog for every frog we find!
Try this at home by placing a number toy or cut out frogs on a lily pad and having your little one count them, then hop that number of times. If your little one gets tired of hopping, try making our jumping frog craft and make the frog craft hop that number of times instead!
Jumping Frog Craft
This is one of our favorite classroom crafts! You can find step by step instructions on how to make your own jumping frog craft here.
Once your frog is done, it is great fun to play with! See how high you can make your frog jump! Make it extra exciting by doing a drum roll before the frog hops!
We hope you have fun singing, playing, learning, and creating! We love to see photos of our friends having fun in the classroom and of their wonderful creations! You can share them with us a few different ways:
