Adventures with Frog and Toad Nature and Literature Lessons

There’s something timeless and tender about the world of Frog and Toad—simple stories wrapped in friendship, seasonal wonder, and quiet adventure. When I discovered the Adventures with Frog and Toad curriculum by A Year of Learning, it felt like a perfect fit for our homeschool rhythm: gentle, nature-based, and deeply rooted in story. My homeschool nature co-op has a book club each month, and June was Frog and Toad, so I thought it would be fun to dive deeper into the books and really bring the stories to life with my littles with activities and hands-on learning. In this post, I’m sharing our experience using this beautiful collection—what we loved, how it fit into our days, and a few honest thoughts for families considering it for their own seasonal learning journey. Whether you’re a longtime fan of these beloved characters or just looking for a sweet way to weave literature and nature into your homeschool, I hope this review gives you a helpful peek inside.

Years ago, my oldest son and I worked our way through A Year of Tales by a Year of Learning, and really fell in love with this style and format of learning. Then I started using their Slow Down collection, and it has become such an important and beautiful part of our homeschool days. So I naturally decided to try out their Frog and Toad unit, and fell in love with that as well!

We did this over a course of four weeks, taking our time and really enjoying the stories.

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What I love about A Year of Learning

Lisa is the owner and creator of this small shop, and you can tell that she pours so much of her heart into it. I have tried out SO many different small online shops for digital homeschool resources, and I think A Year of Learning gives the most value for your money. I am always shocked with the amount of pages included in each collection! She runs sales quite often, too, making it very affordable. This Frog and Toad collection is currently on sale for $24 and you get SO much amazing PDFs, I know we will be using this again and again.

What is included in Adventures with Frog and Toad:

OVER 600 PAGES!

Parent Guide with 20 Full Lessons

Student Guide with Coloring and Copywork (in print and cursive)

Frog and Toad Nature Investigation Guide (Anatomy Collection, Life Cycle Collection, Felt Anatomy Templates, Lacing Cards, Step by Step Drawing Instruction)

Biome Study, Story Scenes and Sequencing Activities

A Beauty Collection (Art Appreciation, Fables, Finger Plays, Poetry, Recipes)

Character Art Prints and Lessons

Vocabulary Word Lists with Master Vocabulary File with Definitions

Bonus Materials

What I chose to print and use

My two youngest boys are 2 and 4, so I saved most of the pages to print and work through down the road when they are a little older. The beauty of A Year of Learning is that she provides more material than you probably even need, and you can pick and choose what your children will be interested in, as well as what is age-appropriate for them. I chose to print the entire Parent Guide and have that bound at UPS. That way I have that already ready to go when we revisit this collection in a couple years.

I printed out every coloring page for each story (20 stories all together), as well as the life cycles of frog and toad and the anatomy. We didn’t do all the other animals because I thought it would be too much information to throw at them in just a few shorts weeks. I printed the biome studies (these were a big hit with my littles as they were able to play with the little animals and create different scenes) and the Fables, Finger plays, and Poems. I printed the Art Appreciation pieces, the Rhythm Card Set, the felt anatomy templates and the finger puppet templates. And there were other pages here and there like copywork, craft tutorials, a couple of the Face Masks, and pages from the Nature Guide that we used. All together I probably printed 60-70 pages.

How I organized it

After I printed everything I thought we would use, I had the Parent Guide spiral bound with a cover at UPS. All of the other pages, including all the student notebook pages, I printed on cardstock. I used my three-hole punch and added it to an old binder. The smaller pieces I cut out for the Biome scenes and the anaimal cards, I put in a little ziploc baggie and tucked that in the pocket of the binder. So each day I just had to grab the binder and the Frog and Toad book we were currently reading. We have the whole book set, but I would much rather have the stories all in one book like this.

How we used this curriculum

Like I stated earlier, my two youngest are only (about to be) 2 and 4 years old, so I kept it simple and fun. Most days, my 2 year old didn’t even participate, and it was during his afternoon nap that i got to have this special quiet time with my 4 year old. Each day, we looked at and talked over the art piece that we were studying that week, I read the story, and my son water-colored the coloring page (I printed these all out on cardstock). Some stories had additional crafts that we do, such as making a paper hat, a kite, a little paper ice cream cone, or a face mask. I made the frog and toad felt animals right away, and he thought they were so fun! I would set those out on the table as we did our little lesson. Then I made these cute little finger puppets from the template, and my boys are still having fun playing with them. I sprinkled in the nature study here and there, without any strict schedule of when I introduced each lesson.

I also would do one finger play, fable, song, or poem a day. We baked cookies the day we read “Cookies”. We had ice cream cones when we read “Ice Cream”. I wrote down my son’s to-do list that he created after reading ” A List.” I kept it really simple, and each day it took 10-15 minutes, the perfect amount of time for a squirmy 4 year old boy.

It can easily feel like we have to print it all and do it all, but YOU DON’T! Just print and use what you know your child will enjoy. I only printed a few copywork pages that also had a coloring page on it, because my son does enjoy tracing letters. But we haven’t started any formal lessons with him yet because he is so young, so I don’t focus on copywork before he even knows the letters or what sounds they make.

I also didn’t really end up using the Parent Guide, but I am still glad I printed it because we will revisit this again sometime.

I also picked up a big stack of books from my local library about frogs and toads, so that was really fun!

Books To Further your frog and toad nature study

While Lisa does have a book list recommendation, I just grabbed any book that I could find about frogs and toads. My local library is quite small, and I have rotten luck with finding books that are on book list recommendations. These extra books are completely optional and not required, but I always like to grab books from the library on whatever we are studying at the time.

From Tadpole to Frog
A Day in the Life Frogs (This one is a little wordy for my littles, so I just read a couple sentences from each page and they enjoyed the illustrations)
Amazing Frogs and Toads(Eyewitness Jr) This is a really great resource! We love Eyewitness books
Frogs and Toads (this one wasn’t our favorite, but still good to flip through)
Frogs! Strange and Wonderful (this also has a bit more text than my littles can sit through, but the illustrations are great and there are a LOT of frogs and toads shown)
Ribbit (this was my boys’ favorite! There are very little words, mainly illustrations, but it perfectly shows the life cycle of a frog and it was easy for them to understand. We used our life cycle manipulatives to follow along)
The Frog Book (this was my boys’ second favorite book- its illustrations that have little interesting facts about lots of different kinds of frogs. It shares what they eat, what their defenses are, where they live, finding a mate, what frogs are poisonous, which ones can camouflage, and the worlds smallest and largest frog species.
A Hippy-Hoppy Toad (this book is a story about a toad that goes on quite the silly adventure)

We really loved this unit, and I definitely would recommend it. I would say ages 3-8 would enjoy it. Teaching multiple ages would work well as there are plenty of materials and pages that fit different ages. And remember, you really don’t need to do it all. Do not get overwhelmed with curriculum and feel like you have to check all the boxes to feel like you got the most out of it. This Autumn will be our 6th full year of homeschooling, and I have learned that you need the curriculum to work for you. You are not a slave to it, and it shouldn’t stress you out. Choose what works for you and your family! This collection was pretty low-prep, like most of A Year of Learning collections. I am not the homeschool mom that plans and preps for hours every weekend for the week ahead. If I don’t have time to do all the activities and recipes and stories, I just don’t do them.

I hope this helps you make a decision if you’re on the fence about this unit. And if you ever have any questions that I didn’t cover, message me over on Instagram or shoot me an email- I am an open book! mysimplewild@gmail.com