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Barrie Students Learn a Lot Raising Monarchs
Emeka Egwuagu, 10, left, and Noor Khleif, 9, watch teacher Cathy Carpenter tie yarn to the chrysalis to move it, above. At left, a butterfly's identfication sticker is visible.
(Photos By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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In reality, the butterfly project began the first day of school and will conclude in October. Since students began classes, they have been monitoring and caring for the creatures, which grew quickly as caterpillars before they began forming chrysalises.
"What I find is that it really gives a kind of unifying aspect to the classroom as the class starts in the fall," Yormick said. "Having a project where you're working in nature really is kind of settling. It's high interest for kids. It's very empowering to garner this knowledge and become experts on monarchs."
In addition to studying the butterfly's life cycle, the students have been learning about geography while tracking the annual migration and environmental issues, such as the destructive impact of development on monarch habitats across the country and in Mexico. Eastern monarchs fly to forests in the Mexican mountains; western butterflies head to the California coast for the winter.
"One thing impacts another," Carpenter said. "All these lessons we want to teach children are available to us through the lessons of the monarch."
The students soon will make paper monarchs to mail to Mexican schoolchildren as part of a symbolic migration sponsored by Journey North, a program that engages students in a global study of wildlife migration. The Mexican children will reciprocate in the spring, when the real monarchs would make their journey north.
"By participating in projects like Journey North, we can say to children in Mexico that we care about the monarch butterfly," Carpenter said.
Outside the classroom windows, the school is growing a garden full of plants favored by butterflies. Before the monarchs are released into the garden for their flight to Mexico, the students will use toothpicks to carefully place tiny white stickers bearing identification numbers on one wing of each butterfly.
The class's record of the tags and release date will help Monarch Watch monitor the butterflies' migration, should any of the school's tagged insects be spotted in Mexico, Carpenter said.
The students say they hope some of their creatures survive the long trip, during which monarchs travel as many as 50 miles a day riding thermal air currents.
"The only thing that could possibly happen is they could fly too high and hit a plane," said fourth-grader Karrin Thompson, 10.
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