Create a super cute and fun book to explore the concept of textures with the Love Bugs
Book. Students will enjoy participating in this experience as much as they will enjoy
reading the book again and again.
I recently partnered with two colleagues to lead a training on early literacy, and we
hosted a make and take in the afternoon for the attendees. At one of the stations, we had
materials set up for them to create a Love Bugs Book. This is a poetry style book which
exposes children to different textures and colors. It should be noted that I did not write
this book, and we aren’t exactly sure who originally authored it, but it’s super adorable
and was very fun to make.
Materials
The items linked here might be in larger quantities than you need, but it will give you an
idea of what materials we used for the make and take activity. You may have many of
these things lying around already or could use different materials from the carousel of
textures.
- Love Bug Book document
- Yellow feathers or other soft textured material like pompoms
- Green gem stickers or other bumpy green items. You could also just braille on the green cardstock and provide exposure to braille dots if appropriate.
- Self-adhesive laminating sheets or packing tape to cover blue cardstock
- Red glitter paper
- Pink felt sheets
- Blue cardstock
- Green cardstock
- Yellow cardstock
- Glitter heart stickers or some other tactile item for the cover of the book
- Heart shaped cookie cutter or stencil for the different love bugs, and one small one for the hearts that go on the last page.
- Hot glue guns or tacky glue
- Scissors
Procedure
Depending on your students, you may scaffold the support in a variety of ways. You may want to cut out each heart shape and secure the textures to it for the student, or you may want to involve them in the process. We were working with adults, so we provided the stencils, the materials, hot glue guns, and scissors, and let them create the books on their own.
For the title page, we used foam heart stickers as a symbol for the story. Each person put a different amount and different styles on their book.
For the rough, red love bug, we cut a heart out of the red, glitter paper. This paper is pretty thick, but you could also cut a heart out of cardstock to make it more durable.
For the slick, blue love bug, we used blue cardstock cut into the shape of a heart and laminated it with self-laminating sheets.
For the soft, yellow love bug, we cut a yellow heart shape out of cardstock and attached feathers to it.
For the fuzzy, pink love bug, we cut a heart shape out of the pink felt sheet. Again, you could attach this to a piece of cardstock if you wanted it to be stronger before placing it in the book.
For the bumpy, green love bug, we cut a heart shape out of green cardstock and stuck lines of sticky gems to it. Remember to make smaller versions of each for the last page.
Extensions and Adaptations
- Add braille to the book as appropriate to encourage tactile learners to track or provide exposure to braille.
- Create extra bugs and have students match them to one another or put them in the same order they appear in the story.
- Create the love bugs with Velcro on the back and legs made from chenille stems so that students can search for the appropriate bug to put on each page when you read the book.
- Ask older students to read the book to younger students.
- Ask students to write a story about their favorite bug. Encourage them to think about what kind of adventures they might go on or how their texture might impact how they interact with the environment.
- Ask students to identify items in the environment that correlate to the same textures they are exposed to in the book.
