Leap Frog

Here are all the wonderful, fun and educational activities from our April activity box, inspired by the engaging book Leap Frog written by Jane Clarke. These activities are perfect for sparking curiosity and starting those conversations about bravery. We hope you and your little ones have lots of fun meeting Felix with these activities!

Building a tree

Playdough is such a versatile resource and this activity not only works on your child’s counting skills but also their fine motor skills. My son is three, so we practised counting from a random number forwards and backwards. For older children, this is a lovely activity to practice counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

This activity is also wonderful in using that wonderful language in the book to encourage Felix to be brave and climb up the tree.

Cucumber Hideout

For this activity, we send three compost pellets, the cucumber seeds and the string to tie the top of the hideout.

The first task was to plant the cucumber seeds. There is something very magical and engaging about pouring water over the compost pellets and watching them grow. We then used an old pencil to make one hole in each compost pellet and gently placed the seeds in. Now we are watching and waiting for the first sign that our cucumber plants are growing.

Feeling brave?

This activity is inspired by the children’s TV programmes that my sister and I watched when we were growing up and we loved watching people getting dunked in slime.

When soaked in water overnight, chia seeds look a lot like frogspawn and has a similar texture to slime. My son can be vary of weird and wonderful textures, so I removed the chia seeds from the fridge an hour before the activity. They then weren’t too cold to the touch.

I made the hand hole on the cardboard box big enough for my son to be able to peer in and see what he was touching.

We added Felix the frog and his Paw Patrollers and it was up to my son to rescue them. He absolutely loved this activity and dived straight in.

Leaf Garland

Before we started creating our leaf garland we headed outside to see what we could find to add to the garland. They were incredibly thoughtful in their choices, bright flowers and green foliage. Threading the leaves required great concentration and is brilliant at helping developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Creating the tissue paper leaves also required some practice and each one turned out slightly differently. I helped F peg her tissue paper flowers and nature bits on but apart from that, she created all the rest herself. We are now going to hang them somewhere and keep adding to them each time we head outside and find another natural treasure. This is a great way to display and make use of all the bits they collect on every walk. And will be a great way to remember and talk about the different places we have been.

Pond

This activity used the blue playdough from our Man on the Moon box, the felt leaves from our Leap Frog box, pebbles from our Clem and Crab box, glass pebbles from the Colour Monster box and wood slices from our Last Tree in the City box.

Really simple to set up and I let my son decide how he wanted to set up his pond. Remembering that Felix from Leap Frog is a tree frog, he immediately decided that he needed to build a bridge for Felix to cross the pond safely. It was wonderful to watch him build and tell a story.

Washing Line Spellings

Using the wooden pegs, some string and squares of a cardboard box we practised spelling our name. This is a great way to practice blending and could be differentiated easily and quickly for siblings.

Blossom

We are really enjoying seeing all the blossom on the trees as we walk to and from school. Using the brown playdough from this box and the yellow playdough from our Last Chip Kindness box we recreated the blossom that we have spotted. If you don’t have any yellow playdough, you could use the pink tissue paper we sent with this box.

A wonderful way to build those finger muscles and talk about the changing seasons.

Playdough Ideas

Although these activities are directly linked to the story, there are so many ways to reuse the brown cinnamon playdough we sent with this box.

So far we have recreated a building site, a farm and made some playdough Easter eggs.