Inside: This toddler frog craft involves two steps: mixing colors with golf balls and squeezing watercolors. The end result is a puppet that can be used as a prop during circle time. Free frog printable included!
During our pond theme I wanted to make some sort of prop for my toddler circle time.
I’ve mentioned in one of my most popular videos that props are one of the best ways to get toddlers engaged in circle time.
When we made our Itsy Bitsy Spider puppets, our toddlers had so much fun holding them while singing the song. So I decided to have our toddlers make their own frog puppets that could be used while singing “Five Green Speckled Frogs”.
Another hit!
How to Turn a Toddler Frog Craft into a Puppet
What I love about this puppet is that it’s a 2-step process that involves process art.
Each step not only is fun, but it builds important toddler fine motor skills.
Step 1: Painting the Frog
What we used to paint the frog:
- Paint, thinned with water (I used blue and yellow, but you can just use green if desired)
- Golf balls
- Frog printable (scroll down to find free printable)
- Container with sides (like a shoe box sized plastic container)
When you download the frog printable packet, you will only need the sheet with the large frog.
You can save the rest of the printable for our frog and log activity, which I will share in a future post.
Place paint into a container and make sure it’s thinned with water or else it will be too thick to see the details of the frog. (Trust me on this. It took a few frogs to realize we needed to thin the paint.)
Once the golf ball is coated with paint, use a spoon or scoop and transfer it into the container with the frog printable.
If more golf balls are desired, place another one in the paint container, coat it with paint, and drop it into the bin with the printable.
It can take a few tries to actually transfer the painted golf ball to the bin, but this is a good challenge!
Then, it’s time to start moving the golf balls around.
This is the same method we used with our farm pigs painting activity.
It takes concentration to coordinate the movements, moving the golf balls around the bin, back and forth.
And yes, somehow a toy frog ended up on our frog activity art table.
My little friends love to move everything around in our classroom! It’s as though he hopped right out of our pond sensory bin.
And, of course, he got mixed up with the paint and had to be wiped off.
We get side tracked quite a bit in our toddler classroom!
Step 2: Painting the Bag
What we used:
This part is super easy. Simply provide containers of blue and yellow watercolors and invite the children to brush both colors on to the lunch sack. Watching the 2 colors merge is a great color mixing experience!
To add more fine motor to this part of the activity, replace the brushes with droppers.
Assembling the frog puppet:
Once everything is thoroughly dry, it’s time to put together the frog puppet.
Open the lunch sack and glue the frog to the flat bottom part.
This way when an arm is inserted into the bag, the hand can wiggle the lunch sack making the frog move.
How to use the frog puppets during circle time:
Pass out the frog puppets and show the children how to insert their arm through the opening, moving the frog with the hand.
Then, sing “Five Green Speckled Frogs”!
Books to go with this activity:
A fun art activity that is used with literacy and music!
More toddler activities:
A Collection of Toddler Color Activities
You can find the frog printable in this packet (click on photo for link):
