Summer evenings are full of nature sounds! Can you identify the kind of frog by its sound? Each page of this fun emerging reader book has one clear frog image on a black background along with an audio clip of that frog’s call. Which frogs can you identify?
Frog Songs ePub created by TVI Andrea
Frog Activities
Spanning the grade levels, frogs are an integral part of the curriculum. Preschoolers learn to count with the classic Five Little Speckled Frogs song, emerging and early readers enjoy books about frogs, science classes study the frog life cycle, biology classes dissect frogs, and researchers frequently study frogs.
Here are some additional early learning frog resources!
Five Little Speckled Frogs Song/Video
Here is the classic Five Little Speckled Frogs counting song/video:
The Icky Sticky Frog book
The Icky Sticky Frog book by Dawn Bentley is one of my personal favorites. The Icky Sticky Frog is an irresistible book that has repetitive sentences/sounds and students can move the stretchy frog’s tongue to catch the fly on each page! I modified the book by adding tactile graphics (bumpy paper to represent the frog, a pom-pom for the fly, etc.) and duplicated these tactile graphics book characters on 3×3 pieces of form board for easy manipulation. Young BLV students love to place the 3×3 tactile images in sequence and use them to retell the story. If you do not have the book, use the video below and have students find the correct 3×3 image as the story is read aloud.
The Icky Sticky Frog Moving Book video:
The Icky Sticky Frog (Read-Along Text) from Moving Picture Books on Vimeo.
Frog Life Cycle
Students who are blind or low vision need hands-on materials in order to develop accurate concepts. Best practice dictates that students should be given the real object (when appropriate and available), a realistic model of the object (3D model), possibly an unrealistic model with features of the real object (such as a stuffed animal) and then a tactile graphic of the object (2D). If a real frog is available, make sure that the student is prepared for and willing to touch the real frog! When creating tactile diagrams, keep in mind that there are a variety of types of frogs and that tactile graphics of frogs may look and feel very different! A front facing image of a frog will look different than a side image of the frog. A “sitting” frog will look very different from a “leaping” frog.
It is also important to explain why the frog has unique features. Example: A frog that swims will have webbed feet; a frog that climbs trees will have little suction cups. A frog has a long sticky tongue to catch bugs. A frog has huge hind legs in order to jump far to catch those bugs!
To help a student understand the tactile graphic of a sitting frog, have the student sit like a frog, with his/her legs tucked close to his/her body. Now ask the student to leap like a frog (extending jumping up and out; extending his legs). Point out these features in the hands-on models and tactile graphic images.
The images below can be printed on capsule paper and run through a tactile graphics machine such as a PIAF or Swell machine. The more details in the tactile image, the harder it is to identify the features in the image.
Use these tactile images to support your student’s concepts about frogs. The tactile images are also fun coloring sheets. Students can create simple stories using the tactile frogs as story prompts or as illustrations with their stories. If the student is an emerging reader, the teacher can create a simple story and the student can use the tactile images as illustration prompts.
Once the student is more familiar with frogs and their unique characteristics, then introduce the small solid black frog tactile graphic. This graphic is designed for little fingers to easily trace and find the frog’s distinguishing characteristics. These small images can be used for counting activities, writing prompts, creating a simple tactile book to accompany the song, Five Little Frogs. Take a screenshot of the desired frog and copy/paste it in a word document type in the print words (in color so that it does not raise when the page is run through the tactile graphics machine). Adjust the size of the frog images to meet your needs, but remember to keep the images small! Print on capsule paper and add the braille sentences.
Three solid black frogs: sitting facing left, top down view leaping up, top down view of frog with legs close to its body.
Frog Life Cycle
The frog life cycle is another fun sequencing and concept development activity. The image below can be printed on capsule paper and run through a tactile graphics machine. Cut apart the four tactile images and the student can use these images to create a sequence (in the correct order in a row) or a Frog Life Cycle (circular arrangment). Note: If the frogs are too detailed, substitute a frog above. You can also do an internet search for “coloring page frog free” to find simple images that might better meet your student’s needs.
Download Frog Life Cycle here.
Froggy Froggy Song/Video: This is a catchy song that talks about the frog life cycle!
Attached file(s)
https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/Frog%20Songs.epub https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/frog%202_3.png https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/frog1_2.jpg https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/frog%20leap_2.png https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/Frogs%20small.docx https://www.perkins.org/sites/elearning.perkinsdev1.org/files/Frog%20life%20Cycle%201_1.png
By Diane Brauner
