Once Upon a Book: In The Small, Small Pond

In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming

Bible Verse

I didn't choose a specific verse for this one. Instead, we chose to talk about the Plague of Frogs that God sent to punish Pharoah when Moses was trying to free the Israelites from Egyptian captivity. These can be found in Exodus 7-12. One of our children's Bibles (The Beginner's Bible: Timeless Children's Stories) features the plague stories written on a preschool level.

Math

Prep: I cut out simple lily pad shapes (they looked like a green Pac-man) and labeled them 1-10. I also purchased a few packs of plastic frogs at the Dollar Tree. We used these to work on several math skills.

~ Counting Frogs on Lily Pads: Jonah counted out the correct number of frogs and placed them on the lily pads.

~ Frog Sort: Jonah sorted the frogs by color and placed each "frog family" on a lily pad.

~ Lily Pad Number Line: I mixed up the numbers and asked Jonah to place the lily pads on the floor in the correct order 1-10. We used a frog to count on the number line various ways.

 

I asked Jonah to make the frog "jump 2 times"  and we did some beginning skip counting. I pulled the numbers out of the line that he "skipped" (the odd numbers) and Jonah yelled out the number that he landed on. Once the odd numbers were out of the way, I had Jonah practice counting by 2's on the even numbers. We also started at 10 and counted backwards.

 

Language

~ Frog Jump ABC's: Much like Look, Jump, Letter Stomp, I wrote the ABC's with sidewalk chalk on the driveway and had Jonah pretend he was a frog. For added difficulty, I wrote random letters nearby so Jonah had to think about which letter was next.

Music

In the book there are a lot of words describing how the pond animals move. We played one of our favorite songs, Animal Action from the Greg & Steve CD "Kids in Motion". (If you want fun music for tots, Greg & Steve CD's are some of our favorites!)This got Jonah moving and thinking about how animals move. We talked about other animals from the book and acted out their movements.

Kids in Motion by Greg & Steve

We also sang "Five Little Speckled Frogs" alot! We used the plastic frogs to act out the song.

Five Little Speckled Frogs
FIVE little speckled frogs,
sat on a speckled log,
eating the most delicious bugs,
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into a pool,
where it was nice and cool,
Now there are FOUR green speckled frogs.
(Repeat and change the numbers appropriately)

I found this video on YouTube and we watched it a few times. Jonah enjoyed the animation. (As always, use caution when using YouTube with children and preview videos first!)

Snack

Instead of making "Ants on a Log", we made "Frogs on a Log". Same thing, different name. I had Jonah count out FIVE frogs (raisins) for his logs. To make "Frogs on a Log", take celery sticks and spread peanut butter in the concave. Place raisins on top of the peanut butter. Enjoy!

photo credit: Mitchell Bartlett via Flickr