To make counting a little more fun, have students count the legs on a caterpillar or the spots on the back of a ladybug. Paint bottle caps or beans red and add your own black spots, having the students organize the "bugs" according to the number of spots on their back or asking them to match the bugs to the proper numbers. Use plastic bugs, such as spider rings or fake beetles, to demonstrate basic arithmetic, and have students use these counters to fill out a worksheet.
Bugs can help make geometry a little more interesting. To demonstrate different shapes to young children, cut out various shapes from construction paper and decorate them like bugs. Show the shapes to your students and ask them to identify the shapes of the bugs. To give children a chance to draw shapes themselves, color a few ants on a piece of paper, and make dotted lines showing their "trails" in various shapes. Ask students to trace the trail and identify the shapes they create. You could also give each student an index card with the name of a shape on it and ask them to create a bug in the shape from various craft materials.
You can use bug-related crafts to teach children about math in an engaging and hands-on way. Have students create egg-carton caterpillars, using one row of the carton for the body of the bug. Ask them to decorate each hump of the caterpillar with the correlating number of decorative objects -- one sticker on the first hump, two stars on the second hump and so forth. Give them index cards with the numbers one through 10, and ask them to make the same number of thumbprints with finger-paint on the back. Have them add legs, antennae and designs to the thumbprints to make little bugs.
Games make math interactive, and bug games add an element of excitement. Divide your kids into groups of three to six, and give each group a bag of spider rings. Have the group take turns rolling two dice. Whenever a student rolls a number, let him put a spider ring on that finger. The student who has a ring on every finger first is the winner. For an edible bug game, create dirt cups or anthills -- chocolate pudding with a mound of graham crackers and chocolate chips -- by spinning a counter or rolling dice to determine how many ingredients to put in. For example, if a dirt cup calls for crushed cookies and gummy worms, have one student roll the dice to see how many cookies each student will crush, and have another roll them to see how many gummy worms everyone will add. Kids can also play bug bingo, where each child is given a card with bugs that contain a certain number or letter. You call out numbers or letters, and the kids mark off the bugs containing that number or letter with a stamp or an X.