L ladybug day -preschool style

I had not planned on teaching ladybug day, but traded last minute and ended up teaching it with pretty short notice.  I felt only so-so about my materials, but we had a great day and the kids were really good listeners, so I guess they worked out.   I only ended up with one good book at the library, Ladybugs: Red Firey, and Bright by Mia Posada.  I used my ladybug life-cycle models with the book.  I think I got them in a set in the 'educational/science' section at Toys R Us.

This was the kids favorite page.  They loved the larva!  They were pretty gross.

The book was a rhyming one so I went with a rhyming activities.  We haven't done much with rhyming.  I said the picture on the lead as I laid them out in the center of our circle rug.  Then as we took turns, I passed out the lady bugs.  The kiddos matched them up.  

My sweet hubby helped me do a lot of cutting and gluing to get these gals ready.  

 The pictures I used on the leaves and bugs are from The best of Mailbox learning centers preschool/kindergarten 1996, the same place the first letter pictures came from with the kangaroos.

The ladybugs made up pretty quickly.  They are just little black circles (heads) glued on a larger black circle (body).  Then a red circle the same size as the black body is cut in half and glued on for wings.

I used some thick black string for the antennas.  They stuck in place when I laminated them. 

We snuck in this eye-spy page during this little 8-10ish minute pocket in the day.  I made the pictures a little bit bigger than an Hh page I had used several weeks ago and the kids did find it easier.  I also added the words so that perhaps my sister would find some use for it in her 1st grade room.   (I can't share this document with a link since I don't own the copyright for the pictures, but I'd be happy to email you a copy if you'd like to see it better.  Just leave me a note in the comments section.)

Here's Lou's craft.  the construction was pretty much the same as my smaller ones.  The kids stamped the dots on with a round sponge stick stamper thing. 

I had this activity ready just in case we had time and we did end up needing it.  We've done this before with colored rugs and a little bug and a rhyme that says, "Little bug, little bug, are you under the ___red___ rug?"   That was last year when they were 3 and 4.

For this day, we used the rhyme, "Ladybug ladybug, are you under the _____ rug?"  The kids took turns naming a letter and flipping the letter.  It's funny, sometimes the kids enjoy such a simple activity.  You never know.

I've been sending home each week the little letter booklets from Musing of Me.  I don't know if her printables are available right now or not, she had some trouble with copyright issues with the images lately and had to pull her printable.  Sad day, but I think she's got the trouble resolved now.