Monarch Butterflies
Tara Rose, a first grade teacher at Richard Henry Lee Elementary in Glen Burnie, is raising monarch butterflies with her students. Throughout the fall, her students kept journals to track the caterpillars’ growth and participated in various investigation activities. A favorite was testing how much of a milkweed leaf the caterpillars would eat in a day: Students traced a leaf before putting it into the tent, and then took it out the next day and compared it to see how much smaller the leaf was.
“Sometimes we would take the caterpillars out and put them on the document camera and project them onto the Smart Board, just to watch them. Everyone would sit so still and quiet…they were truly amazed!” Rose says. One of her class caterpillars changed into a chrysalis during the school day, and Rose was able to videotape the event and project it onto the Smart Board for the children to watch. “I think the best part was seeing the children come in every day and being so connected to the butterflies. I have never seen something motivate students so much.”
For Rose, like Hartman, the release of her classroom guests was a sad event. No one wanted to say goodbye. But in their case, they had hope of seeing the butterflies again: After their migration to Mexico, they’ll return to the school in Glen Burnie. “It’s a miracle of nature!” Rose says. “Second and third generation monarchs will return to us.” And when they do, the children will be ready for them. Arlington Echo leads students and teachers in planting milkweed at their schools for the butterflies to eat in the spring. Establishing milkweed gardens allows the children to create a sustainable environment in which monarchs can thrive. Their learning culminates in a specific action: creating and supporting healthy, mutually beneficial milkweed and monarch populations.
