I was in charge of coming up with a craft for our Mom's Day Out class last week and I went brain dead. I couldn't find any ideas that were simple enough that I liked. I brought a bunch of materials with me and then inspiration struck once we got there... LOVE BUGS! They were a hit.
Materials Needed: Model Magic (we used pink, red, and white for V-day), foam heart stickers, markers, scissors, and pipe cleaners.
Directions:
1. Give each toddler one or two balls of model magic and show them how to stick them together to make a head and a body.
2. Cut the pipe cleaners into smaller pieces to make legs.
3. Have the toddler stick the legs into the bug's body. They can also use the pipe cleaners to make antennae.
4. Have the toddlers draw a face on their foam heart sticker (this was my sample).
5. Have them peel off the sticky backing on the foam heart (some can do this on their own, some will need help) and then stick the heart on the bug to make a face.
6. If you have time, have the toddler use markers to decorate their love bug. My students were so excited about playing with the model magic and decorating the love bug's face, so we didn't have time to decorate the body.
Here are some other examples of the love bugs that the kids in class made
If we'd had time we would've also read this pop-up book about Love Bugs by David A. Carter.
Language Development:
While we made our bugs we talked about the parts of the bug's bodies... legs, antennae, and eyes. We also talked about some different shapes- mostly circles and hearts. While the kid were working on their bugs, I would have my bug move around and pretend that it was alive. My love bug would talk to the kids and their love bugs. Once the activity was over, a few of the other kids played with their love bugs for awhile and had fun making them run around the room and talk to each other. We also talked about colors during this activity. I had each kid choose their pipe cleaner colors and model magic colors, so I would give them 3 colors to choose from and then ask them what color pipe cleaner they wanted and they would try and answer me. This was easy for the older kids and a little trickier for some of the younger kids. Lastly, we talked about the sizes of hearts and pipe cleaners (since some were big and some were small).
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