It was another fun day of frogs at the Speech Garden. The touch and feel pool was super cool today and full of things related to the frog life cycle. We used water beads as the frog eggs, pipe cleaners with beads wrapped around the ends as the tadpoles, and plastic jumping frogs for the last stage. It was quite possibly the coolest touch and feel to date. We talked about all the stages of the frog life cycle, and how tadpoles used their tails to help them swim. We used lots of different adjectives to describe the frog eggs...slimy, slippery, wet. The eggs could also bounce on the bottom of the pool. We talked about the different colors of the frogs and reminded everyone that frogs are amphibians, creatures that like to live on the land and in water.
During free centers today, Ryan and Ethan enjoyed sorting all different kinds and colors of fruit. It was a great activity to review fruit vocabulary as we clapped the syllables of each fruit....pineapple, banana, apple, pear, grapes, lemons....Ryan and Ethan are starting to get the hang of clapping these syllables and it really helps their overall speech intelligibility with the longer, multi-syllabic words. Definitely, keep practicing this at home when the boys encounter longer, more difficult words.
The playground temperatures were frigid this morning with a slight breeze in the air. Ryan and Ethan really seemed cold this time. We played a few games of hide and go seek and chase to help us warm up, but we eventually succumbed to the cold and went inside. We got out our tunnel to get some of our energy out before settling down to language circle.
Our book today was Fat Frogs on a Skinny Log by Sara Riches which is a silly counting book about ten fat frogs who all try to fit and sit on a skinny, slimy, slippery, sludgy, wobbly bobbly log until the log turns them over upside down to splash in the water. Lots of great descriptive vocabulary in this book!
After the book, we reviewed that frogs move by hopping and prefer to eat flies and bugs. I asked Ryan and Ethan....if flies and bugs are fast, how are frogs able to catch them? After some brainstorming, we figured out that frogs catch bugs with their long, sticky tongues. I gave Ryan and Ethan some party blowers to serve as their long tongues, and then they tried to blow their "tongues" far enough to catch some flies that were resting on our table. It's not easy to get the necessary lip closure required to blow the party blowers, but both boys figured it out after just a couple of tries. These are also good motor exercises to practice for speech. Ryan and Ethan had a blast as the flies flew everywhere, and I wish I had brought a video camera to capture their giggles! We then glued eyes onto a green frog and attached our party blowers to use as the frog's mouth.
We sang our song, "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" using our picture/word cards; and Ryan and Ethan did a great job singing the words. Great work practicing at home!
Finally, we learned all about the Frog Life Cycle, and for science they glued each phase of the cycle onto a blue circle. First, the frog lays eggs (lots and lots of eggs!). Second, the eggs hatch into tadpoles that live and swim around in the water. Last, the tadpoles grow into frogs that can then hop around on land. I reminded them (although this is not a two-year old skill) that frogs were types of amphibians, which are animals that like to live both on land and in water. It was a great way to learn more about frogs while targeting temporal/sequential concepts at the same time. Use these frog life cycles at home for further practice of the terms first, second, and last. Also, point to each stage and see if your boys can fill in the blanks...first, the eggs hatch into tadpoles, second, the tadpoles grow into frogs, and last, the frogs hatch more eggs.
The following video was a great way to summarize our lesson:
I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend. We have another fun week planned as we learn all about bugs that crawl on the ground! See you on Tuesday!
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