Frog and Toad Opinion Writing and Art Project

Today I want to share a cute project that my class completed to celebrate Frog and Toad. My students LOVE the Frog and Toad stories and as you can see in this post, we learned so much about the central message by reading the adventures of these characters.

I wanted to showcase our knowledge of these characters in an exciting way, so I had my students write an opinion piece on their favorite character. I had them choose their favorite character and tell me the reasons they liked this character the best. I think there are definite "Frog people" and "Toad people". "Frog people" usually love his kindness and enjoy his great advice. "Toad people" think his stubborn ways are hilarious and enjoy his silly antics. It was interesting to see which students chose Frog and which students chose Toad. Some of my students really surprised me with their choices!

We then created scenes from the stories we read and I taught the students how to draw both Frog and Toad and a few scenes from the various books. The students outlined their characters and scenes with black marker. Then they used watercolor pencil to color in the scenes. The watercolor allows 6 and 7 year-old fingers to get the pigment right where it needs to be. Then I had them use a small brush and water to make the paint blend nicely. We then used a pop-up method to help our characters pop out of their scene.

My students LOVED this project and it is one I will use year after year. Frog and Toad are classic characters and they are perfect for a first grade study of characters and central message!

If you want to check out my Frog and Toad Together Unit click here or check out this post!

Happy Teaching!!

Frog and Toad and Teaching Central Message

As I was looking for a way to teach the concept of the central message of a story, I stumbled upon some of my favorite books… Frog and Toad! I realized I had just found the perfect fiction books to help my students understand the concept. The children LOVE the characters of Frog and Toad. The students practically roll around on the carpet with laughter as I read them. After the reading, I had students think about the central message of the chapter read. I was amazed at the deep thinking of the students. In many cases, they came up with more advanced central messages than I expected! Check out our chart below! We are also in the process of creating Frog and Toad art and writing and I can't wait to share them soon.

We also compared Frog and Toad and brainstormed words to describe them. Check out the chart below. The students had so much fun with this chart. We will use it for our opinion writing coming up soon!

We have been doing an informational study with frogs and toads as well. We will compare the characters to real frogs and toads when we have completed our study. Check out the information unit here!

If you want to check out my Frog and Toad Together Unit, click here or check out this post!

Happy teaching!