Ladybirds to help in the garden

It is the time of year for me to get out into the garden and do some weeding and pruning. The children like to come out and explore the insects we can find. Today we were lucky enough to spot some orange and red ladybirds keeping our plants healthy by eating the aphids and scale - always a problem in our garden with all our roses and citrus trees. There seem to be more ladybirds this year, so perhaps there will be less scale for me to worry about...

Here are some of the ladybirds we made this afternoon.

First we found some red and black cardboard. Then we cut out two circles roughly the same size.

We cut the red circle in half and used a hole punch to put a few holes in the red cardboard and glued them onto the black circle leaving a space at the top for the head. Black marker works just as well to create the spots on the ladybird. We then glued some googly eyes onto the lady bird. 

Once we finished making our ladybird James decided he wanted to make it into a magnet. So we found a peg and an old magnet from the fridge to stick on the back (one of the advertising magnets that frequently turn up in our letterbox). Then it was simply a matter of glueing the ladybirds onto the peg. 

Once these are dry we will be able to use them to hold up the school notes on the fridge with style!