James Hill School

Langley, British Columbia, Canada

May 12, 2004:: Tunia has arrived safely in Langley, British Columbia for her fifth visit at James Hill School. She looked a little weary from her long flight in the bubble envelope, so we welcomed her to our classroom by singing her favourite tunes, "TUNIA' and "If You Know a Bug Named Tunia". Her little toes seemed to be tapping right along with the rhythm. Some students in our Grade 3 class remembered Tunia very well from her visit when they were in Grade 2 last year. She has already gone outside at recess for a fun playtime on the swings and said her "hellos" to our music
teacher, Mrs. Giddings and our PE teacher, Mrs. Lambert. Today the children were outside for tryouts to go to the district track meet on May 27th. Tunia had a lot of fun watching them do their best effort on the ball throw and long jump. Tunia seemed to be a bit sleepy at the end of the day and she looked forward to napping on the "ladybug table" for the night.

May 21, 2004:: Tunia has had a busy week getting reacquainted with familiar places in our schoolyard.

Tunia sat up in her special tree, enjoying the cool shade of the lush green leaves. She was quite surprised at how much her tree had grown since last spring.

Tunia has enjoyed visiting the school butterfly garden once again this
year. Here she is examining the beautiful blooms of the honeysuckle vine, keeping her eyes open for a tasty snack of aphids.

Look what Tunia can do on the monkey bars at recess time!

What fun at playtime, swinging in the sunshine.

Tunia visits her garden in the schoolyard. This lily was planted for our guinea pig, Snoopy.

Time for a rest after a busy day. What a great bed for a ladybug!

June 3, 2004:: James Hill School is located in the Township of Langley, which has a lot of farmland, as well as many newly developed areas of new houses, condos, shopping centres and busy streets. We decided to go on a field trip to the Honeybee Centre in Surrey, about a 15-minute drive from our school. At the Honeybee Centre Tunia would meet other helpful insects for the gardens, farms and orchards in our area. We have sent some photos showing Tunia learning all about honeybees!

Tunia learned that beekeepers wear special clothing to protect themselves from being stung, when they collect honey from the hive. Tunia is trying on the special beekeeper hat. A mesh called a veil is put over the hat to protect the face and neck area.

Tunia practices using a piece of beekeeping equipment which puffs smoke into the bee's hive. This calms down the honeybees and makes them dozy. When the bees are sleepy this helps the beekeepers collect the honey and beeswax safely.

Tunia is busy examining these pieces of beeswax. She learned that the Honeybee Centre makes beeswax candles and that long ago, beeswax was the first "chewing gum".

Tunia makes friends with the Honeybee Centre's "big bee" mascot. What a fun day she had!

Tunia relaxes a bit after her busy day. She is cuddling up to a colourful ladybug windsock that decorates our classroom

June 11 Tunia is now on her way back to her home in Providence, Rhode Island. We have had a wonderful visit with her and will miss her a lot. This has been a "bumper" year for ladybugs here in Langley. The students are finding many larvae and pupae, as well as bunches of yellow ladybug eggs and many different ladybugs in their gardens, in the schoolyard, and even at the high school where they had a track meet last week. It's been a great learning experience for all of us, as we watch the adult ladybugs emerge from their pupa coverings, bright yellow and with just a hint of the spots that appear later on. I guess there must be huge numbers of aphids as well this spring to feed all of these hungry ladybug helpers!

The Grade 3 students took Tunia out to her flowerbed in the playground
and she helped plant the marigold plants around the edges, among the
lovely bushes growing there. We are hoping that the marigolds will still
be blooming in the fall when the children return to school.

Before Tunia left for home we decided to have a very special party for her. All of the treats and snacks had to be a colour that a ladybug would
love: green (for aphids and plants), orange, yellow, red and black (for ladybug colours), or brown for dirt. The children and their parents were very creative with their ideas and here in the photo you can see Tunia among the delicious snacks we shared in her honour.

This leaf shaped cake has a lot of ladybug eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults for Tunia to sample. Yum, yum!

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