Teaching Jeremiah, A Journey into the Mind of an Asperger's Child

Apr. 24, 2008

"The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle

On with the bug theme! Next was "The Grouchy Ladybug". We collected six ladybugs from the bushes outside our apartments and put them in a habitat to watch for a few days. We found a bunch of bush branches that had aphids all over the leaves and we stuck the branches in a cup of water in our habitat so we could watch the ladybugs eat. This was fun!!

Jerry enjoyed it so much that last week at Pioneer Clubs at church he tried to collect some ants to keep in his habitat and watch....fire ants! Yes, he scooped a big pile of a mound up in his hand before we could stop him. Twenty-nine bites in all! He said, "I was just trying to keep them mommy!" The first few days of redness, swollen fingers, and itchy little pimple bites hurt us all to look at. They were all in between his fingers. His left hand of course...the hand he uses for everything. Poor guy. I don't think he'll do that again. At least I hope not.

Anyway, back to the ladybugs. We made emotion face cards by taking pictures of Jerry's sad, happy, surprised, and mad faces and talked about how grouchy our ladybug friend was and what makes someone feel grouchy. By the way, twenty-nine ant bites make you feel very grouchy!

Jerry's Sad Face

We made a ladybug puppet using red Solo plates and black felt spots that we Velcro'd to the ladybug so we could count them as we removed and added them. We also gave our puppet a felt smile and used a paper fastener to attach it to his face so we could turn it around to form a frown when our ladybug was not so happy anymore.

Ladybug Puppet

We made a ladybug life cycle wheel and learned the parts of a ladybug. We also made more fingerprint critters. This time we added green felt leaves to our picture and put glue on the leaves and then sprinkled green sand on top to look like aphids. It came out looking pretty cool. Jerry liked feeling the sand on the felt. He kept running his fingers over the leaves.

Fingerprint Ladybugs

We annoyed the other kids by walking around singing "I Wish I Were A Little Ladybug" to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It". By the end of the week Jerry learned from the song the ladybug's colors and what they eat so it was worth the repetition in my book.

We counted ladybugs and made ladybug ABC cards. We also made a crawling ladybug, similar to our crawling caterpillar.

Crawling Ladybug

We made an "L" is for Word Wheel to learn other "L" words, talked about the other animals and insects in the grouchy ladybug book, and even made a paper plate clock to introduce Jerry to the concept of time.

Overall, this was a fun unit and now Jerry walks around spying bees, ants, dragonflies, and other outdoor critters and exclaims, "Hey you, wanna fight!" He puts his fists up and assumes the fight position and everything. It's too cute...as long as he only directs this at bugs anyway!!