Tag: ladybug larvae

Nature, Outside, Science/Math

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home

Kirsten W. Larson

Our lovely ladybugs are free at last. With morning temperatures above 55 degrees F, we released them near our aphid-infested rose bushes where they can find many critters to munch. We hope they’ll stay awhile so we can visit our “pets” from time to time. Cooper named one “Tickle” after it tickled his arms as it crawled towards his shoulder. My critique partner Julie provided this fabulous illustration of “Tickle.”

Tickle by Julie Rowan-Zoch

Today we’ll read Eric Carle’s “The Very Grouchy Ladybug” in honor of our ladybug friends. While perusing Eric Carle’s site, I found a wealth of activities related to the book, including phonemic awareness activities, time-telling projects, discussions about feelings and much more. Also, check out this pre-k class’s egg-carton ladybugs. If we really start to miss our friends, we might try this.

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Nature, Science/Math, Writing

Loving Ladybug Larvae

Kirsten W. Larson

We need a dog. Without a pet, our house has become home to a rotating assortment of bugs. First, we raised butterflies. Now, we live with ladybug larvae. I think our family is single-handedly keeping Insect Lore — the store for all things buggy — in business.

Because April is National Poetry Month, I drafted “found poem” about ladybug larvae straight from the Insect Lore directions that accompanied the kit. (For a found poem, take a text, any text. You can subtract words, but not add any. Never rearrange the order. Changing tense, plurals, capitalization and punctuation is ok….see this “how to”  post at 6 Teaching Authors.)

The Life of Ladybug Larvae

Eggs hatch.

Larvae search for food.

Shedding skin — molting,

Must store energy for change.

Don’t worry, in Ladybug Land, they have plenty of food.

So that’s it the life of larvae. Like the caterpillars before them, the larvae will eat and molt for a couple of weeks until they become pupae. And from those pupae shall emerge our caterpillars, we hope.