Finn absolutely loves these figures. He spends ages setting them out in the life cycle, then role playing with them. It is our Ladybird Day today, so he decided to draw the life cycle.
Resources
- Ladybird life cycle figurines by Insect Lore
- Whiteboard and pen
Method
Finn found this interesting, because the ladybird goes through the same four stages as our butterflies.
Stage 1: Egg
Female ladybirds lay their eggs on the underside of leaves. This is to protect them from being seen by flying predators, as well as screening them from the weather. A mother ladybird will lay from ten to fifteen eggs in one place and she will make sure that it is a place where the babies can find food when they hatch.
Stage 2: Larva
Once the eggs hatch, the larvae will come out and start looking for something to eat. They will look for tiny aphids or mites and they should find plenty because the mother selected the leaf because of the abundance of food for the larvae to find. After only a few days, the larvae will be large enough to begin to moult (shed their skin). They then keep moulting for as long as they are growing.
Stage 3: Pupa
After a couple of weeks of growing, the larvae will start to change into something that looks like a shrimp. It will find a leaf to attach itself to and it will seem to fall asleep for a few days, but it is not sleeping at all. During the pupa stage, the larvae are going through a metamorphosis into a ladybird.
Stage 4: Adult ladybird
When the metamorphosis is complete, the skin of the larvae will split open and the full grown ladybird will emerge. It will look soft and pink or very pale for a couple of hours until its shell becomes hard. As the shell hardens it also gains pigment, which causes the ladybird to become bright red.
This was Finn’s finished life cycle:
DfES Early Learning Goals (2017)
Literacy
ELG 10 – Writing:
Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds.
Understanding the world
ELG 14 – The world:
Children know about similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another. They make observations of animals and plants and explain why some things occur, and talk about changes.
