🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🤸 Fine & Gross Motor Skills — The physical work of real projects — hammering, rolling, cutting, digging, sewing — builds both fine and gross motor development in an authentic, purposeful context that motivates full physical engagement.
• 📏 Math & Measurement — Building, sewing, cooking, and constructing projects require practical measurement — estimating lengths, counting pieces, measuring ingredients — making project work one of the most authentic early math experiences available.
• 🏆 Pride & Accomplishment — Completing a real project — something that works, that's given as a gift, or that solves a real problem — produces a depth of pride and accomplishment that short activities and exercises cannot generate.
• 🤝 Collaboration — Projects done with a parent, sibling, or group require negotiating roles, dividing tasks, and integrating different contributions — developing the collaborative skills that every complex adult endeavor requires.

The Ladybug Garden Board is great for preschoolers who love ladybugs and/or flowers. Your preschooler will enjoy playing with the ladybugs as you teach them all about numbers and colors. The Ladybug Garden Board is constructed in a similar manner to the Shapes Board, with a few exceptions. Read below to find out how to create a Ladybug Garden Board for your preschooler!

Materials You Will Need

A 2 X 6 board cut into a 2' piece

Sand paper

Drill and drill bits

10 golf tees (to stick your ladybugs on)

10 Wooden screw hole button plugs (these will be your ladybugs)

Glue gun

Glue stick

Paint for ladybug garden background

Sponge brush

Markers

Ziploc bag (to keep your ladybugs )

Staple gun or clear glue

Safety glasses

How to Make it

If you don't already have the board cut into a 2' piece, you will need to do that first.

Step 1:
Put on your safety glasses and drill 10 holes into the board, altering their position on the board. (Looking ahead: the holes will be the centers of your flowers you will paint later.) Be sure the drill bit is slightly larger than the diameter of the golf tee. When drilling, be careful not to drill all the way through the board.

Tip: Place the drill bit next to the board, lining it up so that the tip of the drill bit stops at half the depth of the thickness of the board. Place a piece of tape around the drill bit to mark where you will want to stop when drilling.

Step 2:

Sand the wood. Give your preschooler a piece of sand paper and show them how to rub it on the board. Show your preschooler how different the board feels before and after sanding it. Explain the difference between rough and smooth.

Step 3:
Let your preschooler paint the entire surface of the board a color of his/her choice using a sponge brush. Note: This will be the background color for your ladybug garden. Let the board dry.

Step 4:

Cut each of the 10 golf tees in half to shorten their height when placed in the holes. Gently sand the cut ends to prevent scratching.

Step 5:

Using your glue gun, place a very small dab of glue on the top of each golf tee and place a wooden screw hole button on the top of each golf tee. *Be sure not to use too much glue as it will squish out the sides. If it does happen, however, wipe clean or pick off when dry.

Step 6:
Use markers to make ladybugs out of the wooden screw hole buttons. Begin by coloring the entire top and sides of the buttons red. Tip: If you hold the golf tee, you won't get too much marker on your hands! When dry, draw a black line down the center, then draw a half circle at one end of the line (in the center) for the ladybug's head. Next, draw 3 small circles on either side of the black line. Voila! You've got ladybugs! Allow the ladybugs to dry. Not quite sure your "ladybugs" really look like ladybugs? Hand one to your preschooler. If they say, "Ladybug!", you've got it. If they say, "What's this?", you may want to start over!

Step 7:
At each drilled hole on your board, color a different colored flower and/or a number at or about the center of the flower. Note: The drilled hole can be anywhere on your flower: center, petal, leaf, or stem - you choose!

Step 8:

To create storage for the ladybugs, attach a Ziploc bag to the back of the board using either glue or a staple gun. If you use the staple gun, staple the four corners of the bag on the inside of the bad to allow for easy opening of the bag.

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How to Liven it Up

Use glitter to line the flower petals. Draw bumble bees, grasshoppers and other garden creatures on the board to add interest.

My Two Cents

I have very little artistic ability - even coloring a garden was a little challenging for me. If you're like me, you may want to try using stickers for your background. Use any pre-made craft pieces that make decorating your garden easier.

Remember...
Glue guns can burn your preschooler, so be careful when using it to glue your ladybugs.

Helpful Tips for Parents - Connect projects to real-world problems: a birdhouse placed in the yard actually helps birds. A garden grown actually feeds the family. Real-world consequence makes projects meaningful. - Gift projects (making something for someone else) produce higher-quality work and more sustained effort than self-directed projects — the recipient provides motivational context. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Should adults do projects alongside preschoolers or separately? Both modes are valuable at different times. Side-by-side making (adult working on their own project while the child works on theirs) models adult creative engagement and normalizes making as a lifelong activity — not just a childhood activity. Collaborative projects (adult and child making one thing together) build shared memory, teach specific techniques, and produce a sense of joint accomplishment. Avoid adult take-over of child projects, where the adult makes most of the decisions and does most of the work with the child watching. The child's project should be primarily the child's work. Related reading: See also our garden science guide and our outdoor building and play for more ideas on this topic.