Ladybird Has Lost her Spots!

This is a simple but engaging maths activity for kids at home that my two couldn’t help but touch and play with. Sensory rice is such a great base for a range of activities and here it makes a very tactile ladybird. This is one of the activities in our Mini Beasts Activity Box and is inspired by the brilliant book Mad about Minibeasts by Giles Andreae.

Set Up

I used the red sensory rice and black beans from our Mini Beasts Activity Box and also added some wood slices on which I wrote some numbers. The rice I poured onto a plate and added some black beans for eyes.

F was desperate to get stuck in and could not wait to get her hands on the rice. It really is highly addictive for little hands. I simply let her play with the beans and the rice to start off with. She enjoyed plopping the black beans on and hiding them amongst the rice. As she plopped them on I would count them out and then the same when she rediscovered them. After a while I started to ask to add a specific number of spots to the ladybird. “Can you give the ladybird two spots?” This is something she could have played with happily for hours!

M was very much the same to begin with wanting to feel and play with the rice and then scatter the beans liberally. Again after a while of exploration I began to ask her if she could have first make the two sides of the ladybird equal. How many spots were on each side of the ladybird? How many altogether? If the ladybird suddenly lost 4 of her spots how many would she have left? The possibilities for extending the maths in this activity are endless and could also lead to some written recording if you wanted to.