Valentine’s Day Craft: Hoppy Valentine’s Day Frog

This craft was inspired by a pile of hand-me-down supplies from a friend of my mother-in-laws. This friend taught elementary school for a long time. I have the great fortune of ending up with quite a bit of her supplies. In one of the brown paper shopping bags filled with awesome stuff was a big adorable green frog holding a big red heart. What great inspiration! I instantly knew that we needed to create frogs of our own. I just had to wait a couple of years until we were ready. This year was our year! My valentine frog is is smaller, constructed a little different from the original, and is adorned with a cute saying of my own than the inspiration but every bit as cute.

I chose to have all of the pieces ready for the girls to put together and skip the cutting step. To make this activity more age appropriate for older children you can have them do all of the cutting, or even have them measure and draw out the shapes in addition to cutting everything out. In the preparation section below you will find measurements and guides to get all of the pieces to make this adorable frog.

Supplies needed for Hoppy Valentine’s Day Frogs

• Markers
• Glue stick
• 18×12 inch red and green construction paper
• pink construction paper, about 6×2 inches big
• Scissors

Preparation:

Legs and arms: One sheet of 18 x 12 inch green paper will make the frog head and body as well as the legs and arms. Cut the legs into 12 x 2 inch strips and then cut the notched for the webbed feet. Hands? Toes? Maybe I should just stick to appendages.

Head and Body: Use the remaining 10 x 12 inch piece of green paper to make the head. Fold the sheet in half  then draw half of the frogs head, shoulders and torso. Cut the shape out following the outline you drew.

Heart: Fold the red sheet paper in half, draw half of a heart about 5 inches wide from the fold at it’s widest point. Cut the heart out following the outline you drew.

Eyes: Fold the pink paper in half. Draw a an arch about 2 1/5 inches high and about 1 1/5 inches wide. Cut out the arch following your outline. to get the two little red hearts for the eyes fold a rectangular piece of red paper in half, and then half again, as shown below. Draw half of a heart on the long crease. Cut out the hearts by cutting along the half heart drawn along the crease.

Okay now that all the pieces are ready it’s time to get to work. Only it’s not work because it’s fun.

How to Make a Hoppy Valentine’s Day Frog:

Step one: Glue the big heart onto the frog’s body. Make sure to let some of the neck and shoulders show.

Step two: Flip the frog and heart over and glue the arms and legs on. The arms should stick up and to the side a bit, about a 45 degree angle from the body. The legs should stick straight out at about a 90 degree angle from the body. Make sure the webbed feet are sticking out.

Step three: Flip the frog back over so you can see the full heart with the frog behind it. Fold each arm and leg over  and glue them down so that the frog is holding on the heart. It should look like frog is giving the heart a full body hug.

Step four: Glue the pink arches onto the top of the head. The arches should stick up from the head to give the bulgy frog eye look.

Step five: Glue the small red hearts onto the centers of the pink arches, giving the frog heart shaped iris’s

Step seven: Using a black marker draw a mouth and nose on the frog’s face.

Step eight: Write a message on the heart. We decided to write Hoppy Valentine’s Day, but you could also write a name or other Valentine’s message.

Step nine: When you can’t get a good picture of the little frog lover’s smiling with their frogs have them make grumpy faces.

Then for good measure have them make silly faces.

Then try to get the both smiling and looking at the camera instead of each other and the warm up grump and silly shots may pay off with some smiles.