Season 3: Episode 2 - Five Little Speckled Frogs

Transcript

Hello listeners today, we are taking a look at the nursery rhyme, five little speckled frogs.  To start with the ops who I referenced very frequently, do not have a record of five little speckled frogs in their 1998, the Oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes, nor does Stephen route. Of archival fame and I have an interview with him. 

See my backlog for that.  Saw fit to give it a route of folk song index number. It's more of a nursery rhyme. I'm not very surprised there, but usually when I see nursery rhymes that don't have either of these things, it's an indication to me that it's either a newer nursery rhyme or a nursery rhyme based in the United States at any case, the UK 

national literacy trust does have an entry on the rhyme. They suggest that it is a great nursery rhyme to teach young children subtraction.  Also talk about cute frogs. The lyrics they post start with the stanza. Five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log. Eating some boast, delicious bugs. 

Yum, yum. One jumped in the pool where it was nice and cool.  Then there were four green speckled frogs glug, Gluck.  

Each stanza has one less frog until the very last frog hops into the cool ponds.  I found this rhyme.  On other teaching sites, such as BBC teach. YouTube national literary trust Aussie childcare network and super books. Super books by the way, has an adorable visual and audio book that you can read along with your child. 

And the link is on my blog. If you're interested.  I have found this nursery I'm. Mostly in the United States, although all the references, I just said prior to this were from the UK. But, it does seem to be a U S based nursery rhyme. I have found it in. New Zealand, Australia. And England pretty much anywhere English is spoken.  

As far as the history of this nursery rhyme, I couldn't quite pin down the where and the, when.  With a PDF suggests that it's a US-based nursery rhyme, which I kind of agreed with. Although it doesn't provide any source to back it up. Nursery rhymes.info. And I don't know the credentials of the site. 

Says that the origins are unknown, but it places it as a us nursery rhyme in the 20th century. I would agree with this, given what I've learned about nursery rhymes, it also points out that it is unknown. If the rhyme is meant to reference any specific frog species, which made me laugh.  As I've stated on the podcast before there have been a number of nursery rhymes to teach children counting and animals. 

This particular nursery rhyme is very unique. It counts to five, which corresponds to the number of fingers on a hand to help with motion play as well. It covers math. 

It covers motion, things like that.  This is not a new or notable technique in nursery rhymes. Of course, I've talked quite a few about them. In addition, there are even a number of melodies attached to this nursery rhyme. I just think it was really cute. 

And I wanted to do something with frogs. I couldn't give you really a clear reason on why I picked this nursery or I'm this week. It was on my list of, of ones to cover. And I picked it. I thought it was a very cute rhyme and wanted to learn more about it. And thus, it's featured on this podcast.  This one, unfortunately remains a mystery folks. However, I will leave you with an audio recording of this cute little rhyme.  If you YouTube it, or Google image search it, there are a number of adorable. Animations, attributed to it. It's. It's. a really great nursery where I am. 

I attribute to spring. Just teaching your little one to count and talk about little frogs. I wish I had more to talk about with the history of this nursery rhyme, but really I scoured and researched, but really couldn't find anything. So if you've heard this nursery right before. Or know where it came from. 

I remember hearing it when I was a child, so that's at least 30 years old. I couldn't tell if it was from 1900 1950 onward, any specific author. Or any specific melody? If you YouTube, it, this nursery rhyme. Seems to share similar melodies it? shares a specific tempo to count down, it's very repetitive, nothing really stands out. However, I think it's important to cover nursery rhymes like this. As well as the bigger ones with more rich history. This is still a part of folklore and culture. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. 

 It's very rare that I come back and.  Add something to a podcast episode after I finish it. But as I was looking for a recording. Uh, that wasn't DCRM.  That wasn't under copyright. I was researching from the library of Congress. And the oldest version of the nursery rhyme that I found was, um, something called based on the funny song book. And it was published in 1986. 

However, it's not.  Called five green speckled frogs. It's actually called three green speckled frogs. Uh, the author is Esther Nelson.  I can't seem to get the audio file. Because it's just part of the record of the library of Congress, but I just wanted to note. That the oldest. Recording or mention of this nursery or I'm that I found. I was from 1986. 

Was that when it was Brittany, who knows, but I wanted to come back to this recording and let you all know.

Stay tuned next week where I will continue to talk about the weirdness or in this case, not so weird. Of nursery arrives.

 The version of five little speckled frogs you will be listening to is a download from BBC. Learn. Which is their free site for educational material for children.  Description and like available on my website.