Ladybug Counting Book

One of my professional goals this year is to have more math activities, like counting, number recognition and simple adding and subtraction. Since this is a speech and language class, I try to get creative with mixing our speech and language goals with pre-academic activities. It's gotten easier in time, though --it's a matter of taking our vocabulary themes and using them in different activities!

So, for our Springtime/Bugs theme, why not count the spots on ladybugs?

Targets
Vocabulary-ladybug
Pre-math- counting to 5; TouchMath
Fine Motor

First, we gathered our materials--

Enough counting books for the students and some red stickers (labels I got from Office Depot).
The book needed a little prep work. The original ladybug was taken from abcteach. We photocopied it 5 times and used White-Out to get rid of as many ladybug spots as we needed so that there was 1 on the first ladybug, 2 on the second and so on. I added the text and numbers.

We also used the concept of TouchMath. TouchMath is a multisensory approach to teaching math.That's why there are little dots on each number.

Each student requested their book (I want a book) and we reviewed each page, counting the dots and looking at the numbers. Then, they got to sticking!!
They requested the red dots and had many chances to practice counting--as we put the stickers on their fingers and as they put the stickers on their ladybugs, all the way from 1 to 5.

Fingers are a great way to teach counting to 5!!

I would also suggest using the Little Ladybug song from Little Fingers That Play! It's another way to talk about the vocabulary "ladybug" while counting.

Please leave a comment--I love to hear what you have to say!!
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