Milk Bottle Jumping Frogs

Ok, so I'm pretty excited that this idea actually worked! I thought maybe I'd been staring at milk bottles too long but not only do these jumping frogs do exactly what I was hoping (namely jump), Bubble also thought they were hugely fun :-)
This idea could easily be adapted to make spiders, rabbits - anything you like really.

WE USED:

* empty milk bottle (plastic)
* scissors
* googly eyes
* green and red paper
* glue/blutack
* pencil

Cut the base from an empty milk bottle or other bottle made of flexible plastic (juice etc...) about halfway down the bottle. Cut the base as shown in the photos above and below, leaving four 'legs'.

Bend the end of each 'leg' section at the end so that the tab faces outwards.

You can decorate your frog however you like (paint, glitter, stickers, contact) but we just glued green circles cut from construction paper to the top.

To make a tongue for your frog cut a strip of red paper and wind it firmly around a pencil.

Using blutac attach your frogs eyes and tongue.

To make your frog jump you simply press and flick on the back end (as you would with toy jumping frogs).

The best mid air action shot I managed to get of our jumping frogs!

Bubble had a stack of fun doing this activity, we'll be making more and decorating them in different ways for outside play at the park.

I cut a lilypad from another sheet of construction paper and we took turns to see if we could jump our frog onto it from varying distances.
You could make numbered lilypads and use them as a counting game, jumping the right number of frogs onto each, or just one frog onto correct answers.

Bubble insisted that her frogs needed water, so a sheet of blue paper and we had ourselves a pond :-D

This idea has been shared on ABC and 123 Show & Tell Blog Hop.