Book Activity: Too Many Frogs

Yesterday, to celebrate Children's Book Week, we sat down and read the book "Too Many Frogs" by Sandy Asher.

In this book, Rabbit is just about to sit down to read himself a book when the doorbell rings and Froggy comes in out of the rain to listen, uninvited. Each night Froggy comes back, and causing more fuss in Rabbit's quite house; getting comfy-cozy with pillows, and making himself a snack . . . or three. The last night he comes with his whole frog family to enjoy the story, and Rabbit just can't stand it any longer. He tells Froggy to leave, but as he sits down to read himself a story, he realizes something is missing. He's just not enjoying it as he used to, and he invites Froggy back in. It's a fun story, and the kids really like it.

To start our activity, we decided to try some "knock-knockety-knocking" on the door, like Froggy does every time he comes to Rabbit's house. The boys came up with lots of ways to do this. We first played where one player was on one side of the door and the other player knocked on the door. The player on the other side of the door would knock back the same rhythm. We next got out our drums and rhythm sticks and took turns playing rhythms and copying rhythms. This play kind of snowballed and we ended up walking around the house tapping on things with our rhythm sticks and seeing what different sounds things made. Joshua discovered the rungs on our chairs made different pitches depending on how long or short they were. Christopher discovered that metal made a more ringing sound than wood. Nathan discovered that dirty clothes don't make much of a sound at all. This didn't really have anything to do with the book, but we just let the play lead us and I loved listening to the boys' ideas.

We decided to do as Froggy does and make ourselves a snack (or three) to go along with listening to a book. Christopher was in charge of popcorn. Joshua made a strawberry milkshake. Nathan passed out cheese and crackers.

We drank the milkshakes in the kitchen, because I'm not that brave. Then we got all comfy cozy in our family room and the boys ate popcorn while I read a couple of chapters from "Bunnicula" by Deborah and James Howe.

We had a lot of fun with "Too Many Frogs".