“Oi Frog” is written by Kes Gray and Jim Field and is published by Hodder Children’s Books. This is a wonderfully funny rhyming story about a frog who talks to a cat about what animals sit on – but the frog doesn’t want to sit on a log! The illustrations are colourful and the animals are captured in a lively way throughout the book.
Here are some ideas and suggestions to make the book accessible to children who use tactile methods to enjoy literacy. Recently I had the opportunity to read this story to a group of children who were both sighted and visually impaired. They all had so much fun feeling the animals and guessing what they sat on!
Extending the learning
- Read the story and encourage the child to hold the animals and objects whilst they listen. Have fun guessing what each animal might be sitting on!
- Listen to a recording of each animal/bird noise, guess the sound each animal/bird makes.
- Categorise the animals and birds, e.g. jungle, woodland.
- Categorise each animal/bird’s habitat.
- Make a map of the world and plot where the animals/birds live.
- Make up a story about each animal or bird around the object they are sitting on.
- Make a word book beginning with the initial letter of the child’s favourite animal/bird from the story.
- Categorise the objects the animals/birds sit on, by texture, shape, initial letter sounds. Explore the qualities of the objects and work on extending the concept of each, e.g. “cakeness of cake”, “boxness of box”.
- Encourage the child to place the animals/birds in the order that they are introduced in the story.
- Encourage the child to place the correct object with each animal/bird before you read the story to them.
- Visit the zoo or animal centre in your local area and stroke some of the animals from the book!
Use objects to illustrate the animal and what it is sitting on
Here are the photographs of each animal and what they sit on in the story.
There is also a slide show of these photographs available at https://www.positiveeye.co.uk/
