I do a big study about Monarch Butterflies with my kiddos each year.  I want them to get caught up in the mystery of the Monarch and learn how they can be citizen scientists and help other scientists around the US in protecting the Monarch Butterfly.

One of the activities we complete are Monarch life cycle bracelets.  The kiddos make one and then take them home to tell their families the life cycle of a Monarch.

I set up the containers of beads this way and the sticky flags tell the kids how many of each color they need.  They grab their pipe cleaner and string their beads on as they move through the tubs.

We then make our own symbolic Monarch Butterflies that will travel with the real migrating Monarchs down to the schools in Mexico.  Our Monarchs will over winter in the schools in Mexico while the real Monarchs over winter in the pine trees in the mountains of Mexico.  We also participate in Monarch tracking.  We go outside for set periods of time (10-15 minutes) and watch for Monarch Butterflies to fly by.  We count how many we see and then we record our observations on Journey North’s website.  They track the migration of the Monarch butterflies to Mexico and you can help them track!

There are also other animals that can be tracked to show signs of Spring returning or other migrations that you can track to show where animals go in the winter.

I’ll post pictures of our symbolic Monarchs soon.

Kristen 🙂