We declared today Ladybug day at our house. I brought E's ladybug wings and doll to the living room, and took out all of our fun ladybug books from our bug theme book basket. I also added our nonfiction Ladybugs book by Martha E.H. Rustad. We read the factual book about ladybugs, as well as The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle before doing our first activity...hatching our ladybugs from the ice eggs.
I took some of the wooden embellishment ladybugs I had sitting around, filled up ice cube trays half way, then let them freeze before adding water to fill them up the entire way to freeze again. I wanted at least some of the ladybugs to be well encased into the "eggs."
I popped the ladybug ice out into a big bowl and equipped E with a watering can of warm water to help her hatch the ladybugs to get all 10 out.
To get the ladybugs out, we melted, threw, stepped on, picked at and simply waited for the ladybugs to free them from the ice.
This activity also involved a whole lot of counting. E had a hard time remembering just how many ladybugs she had freed. Here you can see her using her fingers to count...a great skill she is finally getting the hang of doing, even when mommy isn't helping.
After about an hour outside playing with subsequent bowls of ice cubes and refills of watering cans, we finally came inside to read Ten Little Ladybugs by Melanie Gerth Summary, which is one of E's favorite books of all time. We started with a pile of 10 ladybugs...
...and as we worked our way through the story, E moved the "lost" ladybugs into another pile at the top of the book.
Finally, E match up each of her ladybugs with the ladybugs on the final pages of the book. We plan to have another "theme" bug day soon!
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