Yesterday the children were very keen to have a play with some hand and foot prints using plaster of Paris.

One of the girls has a hand casting at home, from when she was a baby, and decided that as her hands had grown she would like to “update it!”

As we were a little unprepared for this project we really needed to think on our feet. We pulled out the clay but we hadn’t used it for a while so it was probably a little too firm.

None the less, the children were very keen to give hand and foot casting a go today, so they used all their muscles and all their strength and weight to make their imprints in the clay.

Mixing up the plaster of Paris to get the right consistency is always a real juggling act.

A challenge the children relished. One girl said, “I know how to do it Sherry. It’s like when you mix that stuff for a cake!”

While they were filling their hand prints with plaster …

one of the boys commented on the lack of imprint in their footprints. ”Hey Sherry, all I’ve got is just toes?!” He did have a point!

It occured to us that casting “just toes” was probably going to prove disappointing to some, so we suggested that they might like to jazz their foot prints it up a little with some kind of embellishments before we added the plaster.

An idea they jumped at!

They gathered up some ‘bits and pieces’ and ‘odds and sods’ we had in a box. Some of which the children had made a while back to incude in imaginative playscapes.

Nothing that couldn’t be replaced!

One mistake we made was to encourage the children to press the decorations deep into the clay.

Mostly the decorations set well into the plaster but the shiny treasure stones having a smooth surface had nothing to grip onto …

which resulted in them remaining embedded in the clay …

when it came time to peel the clay away from the dry plaster.

Next time we will use the clay to hold the objects but not embed them too far into it. Perhaps we’ll even cast them in sand!

The objects with a coarser texture stuck really well!

Never mind! Tomorrow we’ll simply hand over the P.V.A. glue to those children who are keen to glue their treasures back in.

Love, love, love the “updated” handprint!!

As a frog follow up, although of course we don’t care what the children decide to make, we show the class how to make cards that have a big open, shut them mouth.

First they fold light card into half …

… then a slit is made on the folded side – it doesn’t matter how long.

Both sides of the slit need to be folded back with a firm crease, then turn the card over and fold the crease back on itself. (This will make the next step much easier).

Go inside the card and now the tricky bit happens – those folded pieces need to be pushed in. Some of the children can manage it by themselves. Some of the adults need help!!

Now open up the card, and you will find it looks like a mouth!

Then, draw something around the mouth. We showed the children a frog, but we find they come up with lots of different things, and not always an animal.

One child had the mouth going backwards which made her lady…

… look astonished!

… and one wanted just the top lip to move …

… while another gave his lizard a flicking tongue!  Isn’t creativity grand?

Peek – a – boo!

We have discovered three collective nouns for frogs;

a knot of frogs - an army of frogs – a colony of frogs

The language that is collective nouns is so interesting and you don’t need to be a child to enjoy learning new language !  And you don’t need to be a child to enjoying learning about tadpoles either.

They have created a real buzz around kinder leading to a multitude of questions and creating great excitement, not only from our students but their parents and carers as well. So in order to better understand exactly what is going on we have been exploring a lovely book with the children called “GrowingFrogs” by Vivian French.

It is a great story about metamorphosis which follows the life cycle of a frog right through from frog spawn to frog.

The lovely illustrations have captured the children’s imaginations and they burst into kinder each day to check to see if the taddies in our tank are changing like those in the book.

Ours is a giant sized book with giant sized pictures …

… and  it’s an exciting way for them to see what will soon be happening to our tadpoles, (fingers crossed!)

The opening page reads; “Once, when I was little, my mum read me a story about a frog that drank and drank, and grew bigger and bigger and bigger“.

Several of the children got very excited by this.

“It’s Tiddalick!  She must have read the story of Tiddalick“.

‘TIDDALICK The frog who caused a flood’ written by Robert Roennfeldt is another great frog story the children have enjoyed hearing.

We have a good selection of frog books which the children can access from our library shelves and many of the children are enjoying pulling them out to look at.

Some of our other favourites include; ‘Green Air‘ by  Jill Morris, ‘The Wide-Mouthed Frog‘ by Keith Faulkner, ’The most colourful frog in the world‘ by Julie Morris and  ’Picasso, the green tree frog by Amanda Graham.

One day one of the children brought in a case moth he had found in his garden.

He had been following this little creature around his garden for about a week, finding it in a different place each day.  The children were totally fascinated by the way it crawled around carrying its home along with it as it looked for food.

We explained to the children that the process a caterpillar goes through to become a moth or butterfly is called metamorphosis and we used the story of The very hungry caterpillar to explain it in a language they could understand. The very ordinary caterpillar is another lovely book they enjoyed.

They also had a great time acting out the story with The very hungry caterpillar felt board.

Metamorphosis is a fascinating concept for children so we pulled out a couple of metamorphosis puzzles on the life cycles of the butterfly and the frog.

In keeping with the tadpole / frog interest we are currently experiencing at kinder we set up a frog bog using lots of natural materials, frogs (the odd crocodile or two …  naturally) and our frog metamorphosis set.

Including materials like rocks and logs from our garden the water soon resembled a muddy frog bog. It was spectacular!

We have a wonderful frogbog CD which we played (hidden behind a fern) in the background, which made the play space sound and feel like we really were exploring a natural frog bog.

This CD doesn’t contain music just incredible Australian frog calls. It’s so amazing and the children were fascinated by the sounds real frogs make….not one single gribbet to be heard let alone a gulumph!

We have a great song we taught the children about metamorphosis and Sherry made some fabulous prop cards which the children use to act out the song.

Here are the words to the song – METAMORPHOSIS

Kittens look like cats,

and puppies look like dogs,

so why don’t little tadpoles, look like little frogs.

Bear cubs look like bears,

and little sloths like sloths,

so why don’t caterpillars look like little moths.

Kittens, puppies and other things don’t need a special process.

But caterpillars and tadpoles do.

They go through MET – A – MOR – PHO – SIS!

PS. The case moth was returned to the garden and a few weeks later our young friend discovered the empty case … how wonderful!

You can see some amazing photos of case moths and other incredible insects  through our ‘Moths & Butterflies‘ link.

After learning some fascinating facts about green tree frogs at our recent incursion, we seem to have gone into a bit of a frog frenzy.

Did you know they drink water through their skin? Did you know they peel off and eat their skin weekly? Did you know they catch flies, pop them into their mouths and roll their eyes around and around pushing the food down to their tummies? We didn’t – fabulous stuff!

We have pulled out the old favourite songs such as “Mr Frog jumped out of his pond one day“.

And a couple of the children’s favourite books, “Picasso the Green Tree Frog” and “Frog Friends“.

We popped out some coloured card, scissors, felt pens and staplers for the children to make their own frogs.

We took the opportunity to have a skill session and reminded them how to do fan folding.

They could make the frogs legs this way if they wished.

Some preferred straight legs.

They were all individual!

Another green tree frog fact: He can change colour to blend into his environment!