Ladybug Number Leaf Match

We are officially moved into our new place!  I can’t even begin to say how much I love having a house!!  Some people really like living in apartments, but we were feeling so crowded and this feels so glorious! 🙂  There is room for the girls to play!  (There will be even more room after I finally get everything unpacked and put away…..)  It’s beyond wonderful to be close to family.  I love that I can bring the girls to my parents’ and be back home in time for supper/bedtime stuff.

That was totally unrelated to this post, but I just had to get it out there.  This is a counting/number recognition activity that I’ve been working on with Abby.  These pictures are actually from early November when I first put it together.  Hey, at least I am finally getting around to writing about it, right?  *Ahem!*  See previous paragraph… we did just move.

Coffee Cups and Crayons is where I found this adorable little idea.  I had to design my ladybugs a little differently as I can never completely follow rules.  Since I lived in the middle of a giant city at the time, I bought a bag of smooth rocks from Dollar Tree (for, you guessed it… a dollar) to make the ladybugs.  It took a few coats of red acrylic paint to get them the right shade.  For the spots I started out using black permanent marker which was a bad idea because it ruined my marker and they’re expensive.  Boo.  I would recommend dropping black paint on instead.  I sprayed an acrylic sealer over them when they were done to keep the paint from chipping off.  The leaves were simple – green card stock cut in the shape of a leaf.  I wrote the bold numbers on with a big black marker and then laminated each leaf with contact paper.   

When everything is ready, you have your child count the spots on a ladybug and place it on the corresponding leaf.  Abby can successfully do numbers 1-3 on her own but will get there eventually.  She easily recognizes numbers 1-10, so I usually help her count the spots on the rest of the ladybugs.  Then she will quickly put each one on the right leaf.

It’s a fun game, mostly because the ladybug rocks are cute and fun to hold.  If you’re Abby, they also make exceptional cuddle buddies.  Who knew rocks could be cuddly….