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I'm grateful to teachers who offer their students a chance to see monarchs. I encounter many grown-ups who tell me seeing butterflies emerge was a memorable experience from their own childhood.
Here's a list of steps teachers can take to improve the classroom experience...
Make sure you don't miss eclosure
Isn't that one of the main reasons you provide monarchs? What a shame to miss it! Eclosure timing is easily controlled. Other transitions--hatching, molting, forming the J, and forming the chrysalid--are harder to see. But possible... and rewarding!
Make sure monarchs are easily visible
Improve visibility. House caterpillars or butterflies where you can easily see them through clear glass, or an open lid. Glass aquaria aren't expensive; used ones are available. Provide good lighting. Caterpillars like light. LED lights won't overheat them.
Don't lock them away out of fear students will harm them. They are pretty robust despite their size.
Instead, focus on these real concerns: tiny caterpillars are easily lost, large caterpillars can wander away to form the "J," and emerging butterflies can fall down and become deformed. Don't handle newly emerged butterflies for a few hours.
Challenge your students to observe and list behaviors
Monarchs, I've heard, are the last animals allowed in the classroom (besides students). Slow-moving and unafraid of humans, they are easily observed up close. What an opportunity!
- Checklist of hatching behaviors (only the lists with the blue link have been published)
- Changes in behavior as caterpillars grow
- Checklist of caterpillar behaviors.
- Checklist of transition to J behaviors
- Checklist of changes in the chrysalid
- Checklist of butterfly behaviors
Paint a picture of monarchs in their world
They aren't just cute or pretty. Their lives reveal profound insights. Share some of these...
- The monarch life cycle, complete metamorphosis, may be the most successful lifestyle on earth. It's perhaps the most overlooked idea.
- Monarchs are endangered by intensive agriculture, insecticides, habitat loss, and climate change. What you do matters.
- Seemingly simple creatures have incredibly complex interactions. They use milkweed poisons to defend themselves. They signal their distastefulness to potential predators. Other butterflies copy their warning sign. On and on.
- They aren't as simple or stupid as they look. Could your students find their way to Mexico? Do they even know which direction to go? Outside, can they point to the right direction?
- Being "cold-blooded" leads to a completely different lifestyle. Nevertheless, it's equally successful compared to warm-blooded mammals.
- All forms of life on earth are related--they share the same challenges and basic metabolism. Therefore...it's nearly impossible to find a pesticide that will kill crop pests yet be completely harmless to humans or monarchs.