Sunday, April 18, 2010

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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3 comments:

  1. I love this and the lady bug song!!! I will link back:)

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  2. Is there a template that is printable for the lady bug booklet? I would like to print it and use it in my preschool classroom this week as our theme is Spring has Sprung. Thank you !

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