Homeschool Corner: Ladybug Life Cycle

A few weeks ago, Maddog (Madi) noticed our patch of cilantro was starting to get a few aphids on it. We talked about what they were doing there: passively drinking sap from the phloem vessels in the leaf cells (a pretty freaky process in which the aphids puncture the thin phloem cell walls and the sap, which is under high pressure, comes gushing out and is forced into the aphids' food canal. Ick). We also discussed how that can hurt the plant by draining it of water and its sugary energy source, and also opening the plant up to diseases. After a quick google search, we learned that aphids can reproduce--very rapidly--by asexual means, pumping out oodles of clones. Live clones. Which, for the record, makes them viviparous (a term we learned from the really cute Ruth Heller book, Animals Born Alive and Well.)

Anyway, we agreed that the aphid invasion was probably the closest thing to aliens we were ever going to witness up close, which is cool, but also that we should probably get rid of them.

I gave her three options: 

1. Rinse them off with soap and water

2. Spray them with pesticides

3. Wait and see if beneficial insects would move in

She wanted to wait.

So we waited.

And waited.

Annnnnnd waited.

While we waited, we read Eric Carle's classic book The Grouchy Ladybug, about an arrogant ladybug who picks fights with animals of increasing size before deciding that maybe he should just share his aphids after all.

Two days later, we saw our first ladybug.

Then a week and a half after that. . . eggs and larvae and ladybugs, oh my!

We spent an afternoon looking for and photographing all the stages of the ladybug's lifecycle, from egg, to increasingly large larvae, to pupae, to adult. We managed to find everything but a pupa (and in the process, got to watch a larva shed its skin "Just like a snake!" and even see two adult ladybugs making some new ladybug babies.)

Eggs

Larva

Shed larval exoskeleton

Mating adults

That offered us the chance to join in a rousing chorus of the ladybug lifecycle song from Capri+3 that's sung to the tune of The Wheels On The Bus:

Ladybug Life Cycle Song

The ladybug starts out as an egg
As an egg
As an egg
The ladybug starts out as an egg clinging to a leaf.

The egg hatches into a larva
Larva
Larva
The egg hatches into a larva
That sheds skin many times

The larva becomes a pupa
Pupa
Pupa
The larva becomes a pupa
That attaches to a leaf.

Inside the pupa a ladybug is formed
Ladybug is formed
Ladybug is formed
Inside the pupa a ladybug is formed
Until it’s ready to crawl out.

We finally rounded up little brother from the sandbox and headed inside. Maddog found her favorite First Discovery book and we curled up to read Ladybugs and Other Insects, which came from Costco about twenty years ago and was mine as a kid. It's still a great book, though, with transparent pages that let you flip from egg to larva, or show the two pairs of wings that ladybugs have (the hard red outer wings, followed by the transparent inner wings that allow the ladybug to fly). 

And that was more or less the end of our ladybug saga. A few days later, they popped up again as the theme of the daily writing prompt. Here I wrote out the numerals and words for one through five, then drew in ladybugs with a number of spots. She had to count the spots, find the numeral, then write the corresponding word. She then drew her own ladybug and wrote how many spots it had (ten).

The daily prompt is an easy, no-stress way to get writing practice each day, since she recently decided the wanted to work on improving her handwriting. Each morning (or afternoon if Mom isn't on top of her game), we come up with a sentence to copy or a prompt to answer, and put it up on the chalkboard wall in the kitchen. Then during the day while I'm cooking or cleaning, she can come in and work on her writing safely out of her brother's helpful reach, and we can talk about the words and letters and sounds while she writes and illustrates. Sometimes we do the dinner menu, other times we do letter matching or word recognition (I write out sight words all over the board, she writes them in a list in the order I call them out). It lets her have some control over what she's learning, so she's engaged in what she's doing (while still enforcing the basics) and often open-ended enough that it's fuel for conversations for the rest of the day!

UPDATE March 15: We found pupae today! Dozens of them, all at once. We had noticed yesterday that many of the larvae were slowing down and beginning to hang by their butts from the leaves, similar to a caterpillar when it is about to form a chrysalis, so we deduced from our caterpillar watching experience that pupae weren't far behind.

Sure enough, as of this morning, we have about 30 pupae, some which we watched pupate in a jar on the kitchen counter. The pupa shakes itself like you would shake a glowstick to distribute the chemicals that help it dissolve its body so it can reform in its little case as a beetle. Watching them turn from black to opaque to bright yellow as the chemicals distribute, and from there darkening to orange, then red, and developing spots, is an amazing process! It can take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks for a ladybug to merge, according to google, and the time it takes is dependent on the ambient temperature (with warmer weather resulting in a faster pupation).

I bet within another day or two we will have new adults to release into the garden!