Frog Pond Writing Tray with Printable Cards

- April 17, 2019

When I was working on updating my old Montessori-inspired Salt Trays post from several years ago, I realized that I hadn't done a custom writing tray since my apple pie spiced one in 2015. In the salt tray roundup post, I highlighted over 30 themed ideas. I'm not claiming to have found every single idea and article in the world, but I was very surprised and pleased to not find a frog themed one in my hunt.

If you've been following this blog for a while you'll know that frogs are our thing. The original name of this blog was "In Our Pond" with a heavy emphasis on animals in the pond. I even thought that our homeschool would be dominated by children sitting on lilypads for lessons (hahaha).

Even though we've left the pond far behind, we still feel ourselves drawn back to the pond every spring/summer. All winter long, Dragonfly (age 7) talks about wanting to find frogs, and we're talking this year about growing tadpoles if we can find some local. Scroll down to the bottom of the post if you want to see all our frog stuff.

Once I was on the froggy path, the rest was very easy. I used the lilypad and frog clip art from My Cute Graphics to create letter cards for every letter in the English alphabet. The lilypads are small enough to fit in an Altoid tin, which makes them a great take along activity, too. Work on letter identification by using the lilypads as flashcards or play a matching game with upper and lowercase letters.

For extra fun, combine the letter cards with my Frog Life Cycle cards and the Safari Ltd Frog Life Cycle set. Kids can spell the words from the cards and match the life cycle pieces to the cards as they work. The salt could also be used for a sensory bin or small world play area. Some kids enjoy the gritty feeling of salt on their fingers, while others can't stand it. For my salt tray, I gave the kids a paintbrush for writing, but a twig pencil would also be appropriate and fun.

> > > Click Here to Download the Printable < < <

The PDF contains printable lilypad cards for both the uppercase and lowercase letters of the English alphabet. It also has a label for the Altoid tin, so you can affix it and store all the letters together. The letters are designed to be printed on two sides, so they can be used for a matching game. Either print two copies of each letter set or have kids match the uppercase letter with it's lowercase letter buddy. It's a great way to work on letter recognition.

If you're worried about using all that ink, I recommend getting an HP Instant Ink printer. For a small monthly fee, HP makes sure that you never run out of ink again! When you start to run low, they send you a new cartridge right to your doorstep. We love that the printer is wireless and can be accessed through any device to print anything anywhere. It's a great value, too! To find out more, check out my Back-to-School post from two years ago.

For more Montessori-inspired Salt Trays to match any homeschool theme you can dream up, click on the colored text or above picture. Over 30 ideas for every season, theme unit, topic, or whatever. Which themes would you like to see?