Celebrate Passover by Making your own Plague of Frogs!
Frogs! Frogs everywhere!
One morning when Pharaoh awoke in his bed,
There were frogs in his bed and frogs on his head.
Frogs on his nose and frogs on his toes.
Frogs here, frogs there!
Frogs were jumping everywhere!*
Can you imagine waking up and finding your house covered in frogs? Frogs in your sink, frogs in your pantry, frogs in your breakfast…take a shower and have frogs rain down on your head? Ew!
If you celebrate Passover then you probably already know all about those frogs. As the story is told in the book of Exodus, frogs were the second plague that God sent down on the Egyptians to change Pharaoh’s mind about keeping the Jews in slavery.
Unfortunately an infestation of frogs did not change his mind and nine other horrible plagues were needed before the Jews were allowed to go free.
Today Jews celebrate Passover to remember those plagues and how the Jews were set free from slavery in Egypt. Passover is a time of rejoicing and thankfulness. The word “Passover” itself actually comes from the last plague which was when the Angel of Death killed all the firstborn sons in Egypt except in those households that had the blood of a lamb painted over their door step. God commanded the Jews to paint blood over their door step to spare them as the Angel of Death “passed over.”
While the story of Passover is no light matter, I think it’s safe to have a little fun with frogs to help us remember the second plague. I wouldn’t want my house to be infested with frogs but they sure are fun to make out of paper! We decided to make a pretend plague of frogs take over our house and here is how we did it:
First we made some “frog skin” by painting with cheap kids’ acrylic paint (water-based is safest) on top of newsprint. Big sloppy strokes were fine because I wanted my frogs to have texture.
Then we added some warts by stamping a pencil eraser into yellow paint. My daughter added some bigger spots by stamping with a wine-bottle cork.
After the paint was dry, I cut the now somewhat-stiff painted newspaper into big squares. I didn’t measure. My squares were roughly 7 inches, though some were bigger and some smaller.
I folded my square in half and then in half again, just like you would fold it to make a snowflake. But instead of cutting snowflake shapes out of my square, I cut out half a frog. If you don’t feel confident in your frog-cutting skills, have no fear! I have made you a template that you can download here!
It’s pretty easy to follow. Just be careful to cut the top smaller arm all the way off the edge. If you don’t then you won’t end up with frogs that are holding hands. You’ll have a bunch of separated frogs. That’s fine too. Personally, I sort of like my frogs floating down from the sky as if they were doing aerobatics.
When you unfold your frog snowflake it should look like the above. You can add eyes with a crayon or marker pen or add ooglie bubble eyes like we did. We always love the ooglie booglie bubble eyes in my house. They make every craft better!
Then we taped them to the window and pretended that frogs were raining down on us.
We had a lot of “frog skin” paper left over so we cut it up Eric Carle style and made some more frogs! You can never get enough frogs when you’re recreating a plague of frogs.
Frogs here, frogs there, frogs jumping everywhere!
*Popular children’s song for Passover titled “One Morning.” Author unknown.
