Cleanup Question

I have a class, circle, that places instances of a dot clip from the library in a circle over a set amount of time.

The dots are added to a sprite, created by circle, and the sprite is then added to a game sprite, passed into the circle class. So I have a sprite, with a bunch of library instances contained within.

My question - can I simply removeChild on the main sprite, containing the dots, or do I need to first removeChild on each dot, and then remove the sprite?