Busy Bugs Learning Set

 

Kids love the variety of bugs in Busy Bugs.

Get busy with 36 brightly colored, rubbery plastic Busy Bugs and 11 activity cards. With a different activity on each side of each card, you get a total of 22 activities based on counting, patterning, and sorting by color, shape, and insect type. Use a dry erase marker on the cards that require an answer. Many of the cards just require you to place a bug for the answer. I have used these a lot since kids like them, even just as manipulatives for in-hand manipulation practice.

The laminated cards are 11-1/2" X 4-1/2" and have held up well. There is also a blank activity card so you can make up your own activity. The bugs are nicely detailed on the cards as well as on the bug itself. There are six different colors and six different bugs. Each bug type includes one of each color. Bug types are grasshopper, fly, spider, dragonfly, beetle, and caterpillar. Colors are orange, red, blue, green, yellow and purple. There is also a guide included with eight additional activities. They are:

• Who Comes Next? Pattern game.
• Who is missing? Memory game.
• Line 'Em Up! Sorting game.
• The Busy Bug. Counting game.
• Bug Talk. Language game.
• Bubbly Bug Soup. Following directions game.
• Bugs in a Bag. Tactile game.
• Who's the Buggiest? Counting game.

Try this:

• Use tweezers/tongs to pick up and place the bugs. I have often used these in conjunction with the plastic animal tongs.
• Place 1 bug at a time in the individual's palm. Ask them to being it to the fingertips and orient it so that they can stand the bug on the table. Sort them by color or type as you play. Then try two in the palm.
  
• Place all the bugs in a group and play I SPY. For example, I SPY a red fly. Who can find it first?
• Play I SPY but make sure that the bugs are in different orientations, such as upside down, half buried, and on their sides. Can they still find them?
• Sort the bugs into piles by color or type.
• Place one of each bug on the table in view. Place the rest of the bugs in a bag that you can't see into. Ask the individual to place their hand into the bag, feel a bug, and call out what it is before pulling it out to reveal. Sort by type onto the table as you play.
  
• Work on visual discrimination, spatial relations, figure ground, manual dexterity, in-hand manipulation, colors, counting, sequencing, socialization skills, process skills, executive functioning skills, tactile perception, play and leisure exploration and participation 

In the box: 11 activity cards (22 activities), answer key and blank card, 36 bugs
 
This product can be purchased through a Discovery Toy website if you are interested.