Third-graders at Roosevelt Elementary figured they'd wing it this year.
"Whoa, look how far he is already," one student exclaimed Monday.
Forty third-graders at the school raised monarch butterflies, watching them grow from eggs, keeping the insects in their classroom as the students continued their day-to-day activities like learning vocabulary words and creating arts and crafts.
"It's going in circles!" another student cried as the butterfly headed for the skyline.
After two months of watching them grow, the students released the monarchs Monday afternoon,
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Teacher Carla Kroeber qualified for the nets, cages, magnifying glasses, eggs and teaching materials as part of a grant offered through the University of Minnesota. The students studied the butterflies' life cycles, characteristics as well as geography and journaling for about two months.
Monarchs begin their four life cycles as an egg -- a light green-colored egg, the third-graders agreed, about the size of a pin head.
Once they hatch, they become larvae, a.k.a, caterpillars.
The caterpillars eat milkweed leaves, said third-grader Micah Hoke. After two weeks at the larvae stage, the insect larva splits its exoskeleton and wiggles out of its larval skin.
Those unfamiliar with monarchs may mistake butterflies in the pupa stage for butterflies in a cocoon. But that's incorrect. A cocoon is a silk spinning used by moths, the students said, not butterflies.
The pupa is the stage between the larva and adult stages.
"I liked watching the caterpillars turn into the chrysalis," Keelie Renwick said.
The chrysalis is a butterfly pupa. The adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis stage, and does the "pupa dance," a student said, making a hoola-hoop motion with his waist.
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The pupa has holes in it for the butterfly to breathe.
"So you don't want to close your hand while holding it," said JaKobe Switters.
Once the butterfly emerges, it expands its wings, which are delicate at first.
"When they first come out of their tissue, they're soft," said Jed Truax, saying the butterflies don't fly for a day.
Once they do, they migrate to Mexico, said Sadie Duven.
But to make it there, butterflies will need food and warm weather, which may be a concern this late in the fall.
Of the 60 eggs, 43 grew into butterflies. And of those, some were sickly or had already died Monday. Kroeber said the "perfect day" to release them was Friday, when the sun shined. But students weren't in class that day so they waited over the weekend.
After the students released the monarchs, some of the butterflies clung to the fingers and T-shirts of students and teachers, acclimating to the weather.
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Once they do head south, they may struggle to find food.
About 100 million monarchs migrate each fall, according to Monarch Watch of the Kansas Biological Survey at the University of Kansas.
New roads, housing developments and farming practices like the elimination of milkweed can destroy butterfly habitat.
"Action must be taken soon if the Monarchs are to survive the 21st century, but it will require creativity, hard work, and compassion for both the butterflies and their human neighbors," according to the Monarch Watch website.
Sun reporter Katie Ryan-Anderson can be reached at 701-952-8454 or by email at kryananderson@ jamestownsun.com
