Tuesday, September 27, 2016




Title: The Grouchy Ladybug
Author: Eric Carle
Illustrator: Eric Carle
Recommended grade level: Pre-school to Second Grade

Common core standards addressed:
1.     CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2.                  CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP4 Model with mathematics.                                     

3.     CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5 Use appropriate tools strategically.




Summary: The book is about an arrogant and grouchy ladybug, who at the opening of the book challenges another ladybug to fight over aphids. She backs down from fighting the ladybug stating that she is too small. The grouchy ladybug moves on to different parts of the world to find larger and larger animals to pick fights with over the course of 24 hours. He then encounters a whale, who slaps him away with his tail back to where he started.  The grouchy lady bugs meets again with the kind ladybug who offers her the same aphids; this time the grouchy ladybug is nice doesn’t rudely refuse she eats them.



 Rating: ***** (five stars).  I simply adore this book. It is quite imaginative and subtle introducing mathematical concepts, as well as introducing night and day. The fact that the book takes place over 24 hours helps the readers to learn how to read the clock on each page. It also highlights aspects of sizing from small to big and possibly from big to small.

Classroom Ideas: So many classroom ideas come to mind when thinking about this book. It is a great piece of literature and it is also a fun way to introduce the sequence of numbers as well as the clock. I would create a class book. I would ask each child to pick a number from a bowl, with numbers one through fourteen. Each number would represent the animals in the book starting with the kind ladybug and ending with the whale. Each student would draw the picture that his or her number would be connected to. We would gather them all in numerical and size order. The discussion of how the animal and the number increasing at the same rate would be the highlight. Eventually students would be asked to go from large to smaller using the same pictures they drew.


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