9+ ways to learn with Little Ladybugs

Our Little Ladybugs are a plastic-free toy that you can use and adapt to learning at different stages of development with your growing child. From their earliest days, babies are taking in the world around them, firing up the neurons in their growing brains. As they transition into toddler-hood they begin to experiment through play and you can help them by providing the right stimulus at the right time. Our Little Ladybugs grow with your child and can be used in so many delightful ways. Read on to learn how you can use this eco-friendly and ethically made toy to help your child learn through play and hit all the development milestones.

What’s in the set?
Our Little Ladybugs set is a 14-piece extravaganza! First there is a mama ladybug, which opens up as a pouch to hold 12 little ladybugs. The little ladybugs each have different coloured bellies, two of each colour. The backs of the ladybugs are numbered from 1 to 6, using dot patterns. And all of these are packaged in our 100% cotton, ethically sourced drawstring bag.

All our products are designed and tested for international toy safety standards, so no need to worry if the little ladybugs are a choking hazard.

So what can you do with these! Oh boy oh boy! So many things! Read on.

Peek-a-boo.
The rainbow colours on the ladybug bellies give your child a spectrum of bright, contrasting colours to observe, assisting with vision development. Hide a ladybug under a bowl and play peek-a-boo, developing baby’s object permanence.

Point and ask.
As they are approaching their first birthday, babies start to point. Ask your baby to point to different ladybugs. By asking questions such as Where is the yellow ladybug? Where is the mama ladybug?, you’ll be building vocabulary and language skills.

Drop and repeat.
Babies start to develop a sense of cause and effect at this stage, experimenting with objects to see what happens. This is the age where your baby might torment you with dropping something to make you pick it up, only to drop it again. Try doing the same to them.

In and out.
Babies love putting the little ladybugs into the mama ladybug, taking them out and starting all over again. They take particular satisfaction in doing this task carefully and accurately so remember to recognize their efforts and praise.

Filling and emptying
Your baby may be ready to start experimenting with putting the baby ladybugs into different containers to see if they fit or not. This may be into a box or a bowl. This is an important stage, where your little one starts to realize that one object can hold another object.

Hide and Seek
You can play hide and seek with the little ladybugs, either by putting them into the mama ladybug’s belly or anywhere, under a pillow, behind a flowerpot, etc. and challenge your little one to find it.

Stacking
As they build their fine motor skills, toddlers are ready to start stacking. First model how to place one ladybug on top of another. Your child will likely copy you and do the same. See how high you can stack them until they all topple over. You can also try putting them on your head, on the dog, and balancing in other funny places.

1,2,3…
Toddlers love to count (and they don’t always get their numbers right, which, you have to admit, is utterly adorable). Practice counting, and adding and subtracting objects, important pre-numeracy skills.

Children are ready to learn the concept of one-to-one correspondence between name, quantity and numeral between the ages of 2 to 4. They will now be ready to count the dots on the ladybugs and match them to each other. Click here for our blog post on how to use our Little Ladybugs for introducing pre-numeracy skills for pre-schoolers.

Over the Rainbow 🌈
Toddlers are ready to start learning colors from about 18 months to 2.5 years. Turn the ladybugs over and name the different colours. If your toddler is ready, they may start repeating.

Once they recognize the different colours, you can start encouraging them to match them. You can match ladybugs by colours into their pairs. You can also use a colour wheel so they can start matching (you can download our free printable here or make your own).

Matching our ladybugs to the colors on the color wheel, helps build visual perception and thinking skills. Children can generally sort into colours before they can identify the name of the colours.

Order yours here. More than a toy…your purchase supports women and their families in Cambodia.