Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Friday, September 24, 2010

Gallery (click any photo to view the gallery)

The teacher separated the butterflies into individual envelopes and carried them outside in a small cooler so they wouldn't fly away prematurely.

On the last day of summer, sixth-graders at Southern Middle School released about two dozen monarch butterflies into a brilliant blue sky.

The kids had watched over the insects for several weeks in Candice Cetinkaya’s science class.

“We’ve been studying how they change and grow and looking at how much they eat in comparison to their body size,” she said. “Mostly they’re really excited to see the butterflies up close.”

Evan Prather remembered how they looked in the beginning. “They start out little gray, prickly worms, and then turn yellow, black and white for camouflage,” he said.

Then one day the kids came to class and discovered fully developed, bright orange and black monarchs.

Cetinkaya, who is in her third year here, brought the idea along from New Jersey, where she received a grant from the Monarch Teacher Network to travel to monarch sanctuaries in Mexico. The network encourages educators ultimately to use the butterfly’s inspiring story to enrich not only science lessons but also literacy, math, the arts and social studies, too.

During the summer months, monarch butterflies are found across many Canadian provinces and the United States. With the longer nights and cooler temperatures of September, adult monarchs begin the trek to Mexico where they spend the winter at high elevations in the mountains.

“When it’s hot, they like to fly and they use up all their energy,” according to Maddison Simpson.

But with temperatures hovering around 35 to 40 degrees, the butterflies just hang out in the trees and basically live off their body fat.

The school’s monarchs headed out Wednesday on the 2,000-mile journey, the longest migration of any insect.

“They migrate to Mexico, then they cycle through to Canada,” Robert Keller explained, noting that because of their short life spans, it takes six or seven generations to complete the circuit back north in their constant search for milkweed.

“People don’t want milkweed in their backyards, so they pull it out” – not realizing it is essential food for the monarchs, Spencer Carlson added.

The kids also learned how logging and urban sprawl threaten their migration and that heavy rainstorms can hamper their flight.

Cetinkaya believes her students have come to better appreciate the interconnectedness of all living things, predicting, “They’ll be more conscious of every little creature.”