This week in speech we have made ladybugs! I did this with literally every kid on my caseload (except the one phonological kid who said, “Do I have to? I don’t like art.” Fair enough, buddy.)
I started with these materials: black and red construction paper, the body template, and some of my craft punches. The punches are not essential, but make your life much easier! I used a 2 inch scalloped square, a one inch circle (for the spots and eyes), and a 3.5 inch circle (for the head). You can find the template for this craft in my TpT store as a freebie here!
We started by talking about the shapes and colors we saw using a variety of phrases: big white circle, white paper, little black circle, black paper, red paper, big black circle, red square, etc. Then we glued the red squares onto the white circle. This targeted requesting materials (e.g. “I need/want glue.”) and then labeling where we were putting things (e.g. on the glue, in the circle, on the white paper, etc.). For some friends, just requesting the materials was their goal. Other worked on /s/ blends, as you can see from my iPad on the table!
We kept going until the whole white circle now turned red! This is the ladybug’s body. Next we compared sizes and labeled accordingly: big, black circle vs. little, black circle.
The next step was to add the head. That’s the big circle and it goes in the blank space on the template, above the red area. This is great for receptive language and working on big vs. little. It’s not shown on this ladybug, but the others got little white circles for eyes. We glued those on the head and I drew small dots on them for pupils using a marker.
Next we added spots. Students got to pick how many spots they wanted their ladybug to have. I also gave him antennae. When those were done, I let this student draw a face on his ladybug because he loved doing it! Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the ladybugs with white circles for eyes, but you get the idea.
Here is one friend’s finished product. It was great for him to take home to work on those /s/ blends some more!
This was a great craft for some of my little ones working on functional language (“I want…” phrases), my articulation/phonology kids, and everyone in between! They all loved it. And they were fascinated with my craft punches, as well!
