Inspired by our most recent musical, Croak!, we’ve come up with five fantastic literacy lessons, and they’re all about frogs! Make use of these fun literacy activities in your classroom as you prepare for summer and your upcoming school musical. So, what are you waiting for? Hop to it!
Five Literacy Activities About Frogs!
1. Fancy, Fabulous Frogs – Alliteration Alert! Alliteration is when the same letter or sound occurs at the beginning of adjacent words.
The Main Task: There are lots of different creatures in Croak! including a snail, a ladybird, a tadpole and lots of frogs! Ask your class to come up with a selection of adjectives to describe these creatures, but challenge them to think only of words that begin with the same letter as the creature they’re describing.
Slightly Trickier: Using one of the creatures, write a sentence about it full of interesting adjectives and fun alliteration. For example: The slow, slimy, silky snail likes to hide away in his curly-wurly, crackly shell until it is safe to come out.
Take It Further: Now, take little bits of everyone’s sentences and create a class poem. Count how many different adjectives you have used and count how many different alliteration sequences you have made. By the end of this, you’ll be absolutely amazing at alliteration!
2. Splish, Splash, Splosh – Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like the noises they are describing.
The Main Task: Have a discussion about the sounds you may hear in a garden. What sound would a gentle breeze make? What loud sound does a frog make? CROAK!
Slightly Trickier: Develop a piece of creative writing about garden sounds. Emphasize how different sounds may create different moods. The sound of a frog jumping into a pond – SPLASH! – may create a fun and energetic ambiance, whilst a RUMBLE of thunder could create a mood that’s scary and tense.
Take It Further: Get out your percussion box and have a go at creating your own summer garden soundscape. Try to recreate all the onomatopoeia words you’ve collected as a class.
3. Five, Seven, Five – Haikus & Frogs
A haiku is a very simple poem consisting of three lines. The first line consists of five syllables, the second has seven syllables and the third has five syllables again.
The Main Task: Using a variety of garden-themed words, ask your class to clap the number of syllables in each word. For example, frog has one syllable, so it only requires one clap. However, water has two syllables and therefore requires two claps. How many times would you clap for bumblebee?
Slightly Trickier: When children are confident with the number of syllables in a word, try creating sentences that may fit the haiku structure. Create a collection of sentences with varying numbers of syllables and ask the children to identify which sentences would fit the structure of a haiku.
Take It Further: Ask children to create their own garden/frog-themed haiku using the skills they have just learnt. Sometimes syllables can be tricky, so you could ask the children to work in pairs to create their poems. Here’s an example:
The blue pond water rippled.
Bumblebees flew high.
4. Frog, Dog, Blog! – Time For A Rhyme!
A rhyme is the correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words.
The Main Task: Use images to help teach different rhyming sequences. First, show a selection of images which depict various objects that sound the same when said aloud. Make sure there is one image that doesn’t sound the same as the others and ask children to spot the odd one out. For example, you could show a picture of a frog, a dog, a log and a cat. By saying the words aloud, children should be able to tell that ‘cat’ doesn’t sound the same as ‘frog’, ‘dog’ or ‘log’.
Take It Further: After you’ve established a selection of different sequences, encourage the children to create their own rhyming patterns. Ask them to think about rhyming words for things they may find in the garden. What rhymes with flower, snail and pond? They could even draw the patterns as pictures to help develop sequences.
5. Jump, Hop, Leap – Doing Words Are Verbs
Verbs are words that describe an action, like jump!
The Main Task: There’s always a lot going on in Croak! with characters moving about throughout the garden. Ask your class to think of a variety of verbs that could describe the actions of these different characters as they move across the stage.
Take It Further: Combine this literacy lesson with a physical development class. Ask the children to recall the list of verbs they developed earlier. Can they create a game from these words that gets them moving around the school field? Maybe they could create an obstacle course that involves jumping, crawling and sliding.
We hope our list of frog-themed literacy lesson ideas has got you jumping for joy! Remember that with all of our musicals, there are endless possibilities for cross-curriculum links. Sign up to our blog for more essential teaching tips and advice on how to get the most out of your summer musical.
More about Croak!
It's summertime in the garden! Flowers are blooming, insects are buzzing and the pond is alive with croaking, but Speedy the tadpole is sad because he can't sing along with the froggy chorus. One day, however, something seems to be happening to Speedy – he's changing... This delightful new musical explores the life cycle of a frog through five catchy songs and three instrumental tracks. With a simple script and a positive message, Croak! is perfect for ages 3-7, so join Speedy and his friends and learn that we can all do something if we really try!
Listen to sample songs and purchase Croak! here.
More Lovely Literacy Ideas
If you enjoyed these literacy ideas, you’ll love The Niki Davies Book Of Lovely Literacy Songs. Written specifically for 3-7 year olds, this wonderful variety of literacy-themed songs are fun to sing and easy to learn. With scope for including children's own rhymes and words, this valuable resource is packed full of phonemes, onomatopoeia, homophones, verbs and compound words. The selection also includes a delightful journey to Rhyming Land and a fabulous hunt for an octopus.
Listen to sample songs and purchase The Niki Davies Book Of Lovely Literacy Songs here.
Written by Florence Robjohn - Creative Marketing Assistant, Out of the Ark Music Team.
COMING UP!
Rebecca Kincaid, co-writer of many of our wonderful musicals, takes the hot seat in our Out of the Ark Music Asks - Musical Special! Read all about the events that inspired Pirates Versus Mermaids and Hats Off! Be sure to look out for a top tip for staging a school musical too!
