Videos and Websites for Your Frog Unit

If you’re teaching a thematic unit about frogs in kindergarten or first grade, videos and websites can be such helpful teaching tools! Multimedia experiences give students the opportunity to experience frogs and tadpoles in ways that they can’t through books. Take a look at these websites and videos that will give your students front-row seats to the habits, life cycles, and features of tadpoles and frogs!

Factual & Fun Frog Websites

Take a look at these websites that you can share with your students during your frog unit to capture their interest and attention.

Elinor Wonders Why: Pond Life
Join Elinor, the curious bunny rabbit from PBS Kids, in this interactive pond-building game. This slow-paced activity allows students to build and explore a pond ecosystem (which includes tadpoles and frogs) while being exposed to vocabulary like, “I wonder” and “I noticed.”
Florida Museum: Florida Frog Calls
This site has a large number of frog sound recordings. Listening to some of these sounds helps students recognize the sounds of frogs in their own environment (if there are any) and broadens their understanding of the kinds of calls frogs make (beyond “ribbit” and “croak”).
San Diego Zoo: Goliath Frog
This page has some impressive pictures of and facts about the world’s largest species of frog!
Active Wild: Poison Dart Frog Facts for Kids
This site has some interesting pictures and facts that curious kids will enjoy.
Taddypole: Simulation Game
This animated simulation lets children control a tadpole as it metamorphosizes into a frog. This game is best played on a shared screen with an adult because it has written captions that would need to be read aloud for students to get the most out of the activity.

Need more frog materials? Check out these comprehensive print and digital resources to incorporate into your frog unit! (Scroll down to read more about frog videos.)

Frog Videos: Educational and Fun!

I’ve vetted these videos for quality content to save you time. But *disclaimer* we all know how the internet can be–things can change at any time–so I suggest you preview anything you’re planning to show your students!

This is a cool animated timelapse of the life cycle of a frog. Though it looks very realistic, I suggest mentioning to the children that someone created this very cool model using computer graphics. If students look closely, they may notice that this frog has three toes on each foot, whereas real frogs have five on their back feet and four on their front feet (or “hands”).

This next “screensaver” video is almost an hour long. It consists of calm, quiet music and video footage of various types of frogs. This is great background viewing for quiet times in the classroom. Just as a heads up, there is a scene at about the 45-minute mark where a very large frog catches and eats a snake. This could be exciting/distracting/horrifying depending on your point of view!

This informational video is about nine minutes long and is packed with really neat video footage and information about frogs. This one can be used along with nonfiction books to give students the facts and understanding they need for informational writing

Another fact-filled video, this 3 1/2 production comes from the San Diego Zoo and has more interesting info and some cool footage of the frogs in their exhibits.

This fun song about amphibians is catchy and includes cute animation. It makes it easy for kids to remember the names of various amphibians along with some simple facts.

Harry Kindergarten has made a bunch of fun videos for children set to his original songs. This frog video is full of information about frogs!

This song describes the life cycle of a frog. The kid-friendly animation is a cross between realistic and cutesy.

The next two videos are both creations of Jack Hartmann and both cover the life cycle of frogs in Hartmann’s exuberant way!

This catchy tune from National Geographic Kids has fascinating footage of a slow-motion frog jump. (Other than the frog jump, though, the video is pretty fast-paced and might warrant a couple of run-throughs to digest all the information!)

If you have students that are always craving bizarre and scarcely-known facts, then this one will be perfect. Jessi and Squeaks from SciShow Kids tell all about the special feature of wood frogs–being able to survive being frozen solid during the winter!

A frog unit in the primary grades wouldn’t be complete without singing some traditional songs and fingerplays! “Five Green and Speckled Frogs” is an old favorite (and lends itself to math tie-ins) and “Little Green Frog” is a silly song that kids enjoy singing as a brain break.