Ten-Spotted Bugs - Scholastic

Ten-Spotted Bugs

Counting Caterpillars and Other Math Poems © Betsy Franco, Scholastic Teaching Resources

Some ten-spotted bugs and ten-spotted frogs and ten-spotted leopards and turtles and dogs all gathered together to check out their spots and to find all the ways of arranging ten dots!

28

“Ten-Spotted Bugs”

Sums of Ten

Counting Caterpillars and Other Math Poems © Betsy Franco, Scholastic Teaching Resources

Ten Spots To introduce the theme of the poem, make a tagboard ladybug with five spots on each side of a center line running down its back. Write the poem on chart paper or on pocket chart strips with the words ten-spotted in a different color. Draw a picture or picture card for each animal in the poem and place the picture next to its name. Display the ladybug and talk about other ways the ten spots could be arranged, such as six spots on one side and four spots on the other. Now you’re ready to read the first four lines of the poem in unison! (The last four lines are less predictable). Note that there is only one punctuation mark in the whole poem and that the poem should be read accordingly.

Arranging Ten Spots Brainstorm a list of spotted animals, including the animals named in the poem—don’t forget about giraffes and geckos. Have each child draw a spotted animal—without its spots—that covers a whole sheet of paper. Ladybugs, turtles, frogs, and geckos will be easiest to draw because the picture needs to be a bird’s-eye view as shown below. Have each child draw a line down the center of the animal’s back and add ten spots. They will have to decide how many dots to place on each side of the line. Ask children to record their results in number sentences, and make a list of all the number sentences. After the class studies the list, decide if all the ways of arranging ten spots in two groups have been found.

Ten Black Dots Let children compile the drawings they made in the “Arranging Ten Spots” activity into a class book called Ten-Spotted Bugs. Discuss in which order the pictures should appear. Guide children in recognizing the pattern mentioned in the previous activity (10 + 0, 9 + 1, 8 + 2, 7 + 3, and so on). After completing this activity, children will truly appreciate Donald Crews’s simple but powerful book, Ten Black Dots (Greenwillow, 1986).

29