Princess and Frog Coloring Page with PDF Sheet to Print

Princess & Frogs: History & Fun Facts

Quick Facts

• The Brothers Grimm published The Frog King, the original Frog Prince story, in their 1812 fairy tale collection.
• Frogs are amphibians, meaning they live part of their lives in water and part on land.
• A frog's skin is moist and permeable, allowing it to absorb oxygen and water directly from its surroundings.
• Female frogs lay jelly-coated eggs in water, which hatch into swimming tadpoles before slowly growing legs.
• The American bullfrog is one of North America's largest frogs and can reach about 8 inches long.
• Glass frogs from Central and South America have see-through belly skin that reveals their tiny beating hearts.

Frogs have hopped through human stories for thousands of years, and they are just as interesting in real life as they are in fairy tales. They belong to a group of animals called amphibians, which also includes toads, salamanders, and newts. Scientists have named more than 7,000 frog species living on every continent except Antarctica, from tiny rainforest jewels the size of a fingernail to chunky bullfrogs the size of a dinner plate. The princess in this picture is meeting just one small pond frog, but behind that single friendly hop is a long history of folklore, a fascinating life cycle that begins in water, and a quiet role frogs play in keeping ponds, streams, and wetlands healthy around the world today.

The Frog King: A Brothers Grimm Tale from 1812

The story most people call The Frog Prince was first published as The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich in the very first edition of Children's and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. In the original German version, a princess drops her golden ball into a deep spring, and a talking frog agrees to fetch it if she promises to let him eat from her plate and sleep on her pillow. When she finally keeps her promise, the frog transforms back into a prince who had been cursed by a witch. Interestingly, in the Grimm original the spell is broken when the princess throws the frog against a wall, not by a kiss. The kissing version became popular much later in English retellings during the 1800s and 1900s, and it is the one most children know today.

From Egg to Frog: A Pond Life Cycle

Every frog begins life in the water as a tiny egg inside a clear jelly cluster called frogspawn. A female frog can lay hundreds or even thousands of eggs at one time, often draping them around pond plants like the cattails and lily pads in this picture. After about one to three weeks, the eggs hatch into tadpoles, small swimming creatures with round bodies, long tails, and feathery gills for breathing underwater. Over the next two to four months, tadpoles slowly transform in a process called metamorphosis. They grow back legs first, then front legs, their tail shrinks and is absorbed into the body, their gills close up, and lungs develop so they can breathe air. By the end, a fully formed froglet hops out of the water to begin life on land.

Why Healthy Ponds Need Frogs

Frogs are sometimes called nature's pollution detectors because their thin, permeable skin soaks up whatever is in the water and air around them. If a pond becomes polluted, frogs are often the first animals to disappear, which tells scientists that the whole habitat is in trouble. In a healthy pond like the one in this coloring page, frogs play several important jobs. Adult frogs eat huge numbers of mosquitoes, flies, slugs, and other insects, which helps control pests naturally without chemicals. Their tadpoles munch on algae and keep the water clearer for other pond life. Frogs themselves are food for herons, snakes, raccoons, and large fish, so they are an important link in the food chain.