Second graders experience the metamorphosis of butterflies first hand!
Second grade students at Lansing Elementary School have spent the last month raising and caring for monarch caterpillars. This is a wonderful time of year to raise monarchs, since fall is when the last batch of monarch butterflies emerge and migrate to Mexico.
The Master Gardeners through the K-State Extension office made this project possible by donating monarch caterpillars to each of the second-grade classrooms in August. Each teacher had a butterfly cage to keep the caterpillars safe in the classroom while they went through their metamorphosis from larvae to pupae to butterfly. Students prepared the habitats with food, water, shelter, and air.
The project was a wonderful experience for the students to learn the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. In the end, each class released their monarch back into the wild, where the monarchs can make their way to Mexico before the weather gets cold.