Crawling things

We loved the butterfly kit so much, we decided to go back to the site and purchase both of the other kits the company sells: a ladybug kit and a praying mantis kit.

We purchased them at the same time, because the ladybugs would be ready to observe right away, while the praying mantis eggs wouldn't hatch for a few weeks.

So here's the ladybug land.  We got this and 13 ladybug larvae.

Fun story, did you know this is what ladybug larvae look like?  Because I didn't. 

Within just a few days, they had curled up and pupated.  It didn't take long at all.

While we were waiting for them to emerge, we were thrilled to see a beautiful wild ladybug in our own backyard.  It was so much fun to observe it and let it crawl around, and then wave goodbye once it flew away.

And only a couple days after that, we saw our very first ladybug!  The spawn named it Mercury.

It turns out they have no spots at all when they first emerge.  It takes a few hours for the spots to appear.

We put in some raisins for the ladybugs to eat.

Tasty raisins!

Of course, ladybugs are carnivores, so we only kept them a couple days, long enough for all 13 to emerge, and then we took them outside.

We released them all, one at a time, and she gave each one a proper goodbye.  She'd named all of them.  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Sun, Moon, Ganymede, and Titan (we'd just finished a unit on astronomy for her school).

Every single one crawled around on her arm a bit before she gently set them on the ground or in a tree.  It was a lot of fun, and we're definitely doing it again next year.