Jump Frog Jump

This month, we have been attending a family story time each Monday and Wednesday morning. It's taught by Mr. One's preschool teacher and another preschool teacher.  We have loved all of the stories, activities, crafts and fun.

Frog day was one of our favorites.  We read lots of fun frog books, sang "Five Little Speckled Frogs", made puppets to act out the song, then made this little game.  We had so much fun playing it at home, I thought I'd share it with you, along with two frog book recommendations.

Jump, Frog, Jump!

You will need:

one game board (I laminated mine for extra durability) 
four different colored frogs (or another colored manipulative of your choice, just make sure you have four different colors, such as four bear counters)
one die

To make your game board, create a grid on cardstock.  You will need 4 boxes across and six boxes down.  Bold the line under your first row of boxes and your last row of boxes.  Write "Finish Line" across the last row of boxes to indicate your ending point.  Laminate for durability.

You can find a template to make your own die here.   Color a circle of color that corresponds to the colors of your manipulative colors on four of the sides of your die.  Write "Roll Again" on the other two sides.  For our game, we had a blue, green, pink and yellow frog, so our die had blue, green, pink, and yellow circles and two "Roll Again" spaces.

Place all of your frogs in the top boxes, behind the bold line.  This is the start.

Each player takes a turn rolling the die and moving the corresponding colored frog one space.

If a player rolls a "Roll Again" then they roll until they get a color.

Take turns rolling and hopping the frogs until one reaches the finish space.

I love this game for several reasons.  First, it is non-competitive.  No person is a winner or loser.  Everyone plays together to see what frog reaches the finish line first.  It is simple enough for my two year old to play and short enough to keep his attention.  It is easily adaptable to other themes.  You could race bears, or ocean animals, etc.  by just changing your die and your manipulative.  An added bonus is being able to chant "Jump frog jump!"  each time we move a frog!

Speaking of Jump, Frog, Jump!...

Read the book, by Robert Kalan

This is a simple story with the refrain "Jump, frog, jump" throughout the book.  Find out what Frog must jump from.

Frogs by Nic Bishop

This book has amazing photographs of frogs from all over the world, from the jungles to the deserts, exotic and rare to the common bullfrogs.  This is a more wordy read, too long for the younger preschoolers, but full of fascinating facts.  At the end is a two page explanation from the author about his work that is just as interesting as the frog facts.

"Hoppy" reading and playing!

*book images from amazon.com