Its Spring and finally warming up around here! We love the warmer weather and spending a lot of time outside. Lately we have been eating lunch out in the backyard, playing in the sand table, and swimming quite a bit. Aside from all that, Henley's favorite thing to do outside is play with bugs.
Seriously, every day she is on a hunt for snails in our yard. She collects them all into little snail families and gives them all family roles and makes houses for them. The same goes for rollie pollies. In fact, I had to get her a bug catcher because every time we would take a walk, she would have a handful of bugs and if she lost one, it was the end of the world for a minute, making walks to the park especially long, haha.
This beautiful Spring weather brings about a bunch of awesome opportunities to show kiddos the great outdoors, which brings me to one of our favorite bug activities: releasing ladybugs.
You can find ladybugs for sale at garden centers. They are great for your yard, specifically for plants that are plagued by aphids or mites. We buy ours at the local Armstrong Garden Center. One container houses a few hundred ladybugs and costs around ten dollars.
Once you get your ladybugs home, you can keep them in their container until you are ready to release them. The best time of day to release them is in the evening or early morning hours. They are most active when it is cool (around 60 degrees or so).
Have fun! They will crawl and fly all over the place when released. They were all over Henley and my niece Autumn. We had to do a ladybug check before we went in the house, because they were even in our hair! Luckily, none of us are squeamish towards bugs, ha! We played with the ladybugs for about an hour.
- Ladybugs are a type of beetle and can also be called Ladybirds.
- They can have anywhere from 0-20 spots.
- Ladybugs are red because the color is a warning to predators that they will taste bad or could be poisonous.
- To defend themselves, ladybugs play dead.
- They can live up to a year.
- Ladybugs are both male and female.
- An adult ladybug can eat up to 50 aphids in a day.
- Ladybugs taste and smell with their antennae.
- They lay their legs on the underside of leaves and the eggs look like tiny yellow jellybeans.
- Ladybugs have two sets of wings, their outer harder wings for protection, and soft inner wings for flight.
Note: this post is not sponsored, we just love bugs and wanted to share our experience with you all!
