Watson Elementary School students create monarch butterfly waystation

Watson Elementary students are doing their part to ensure the lengthy migration of Monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico.

This past January, the then third grade class of students took part in the Monarch Waystation program, by learning about the butterflies and their migration process from retired principal Tom Hodge and then creating their own waystation in the school garden.

Hodge said he brought the idea of the waystation to the school officials after the Phillips House Museum had an exhibit on butterflies that the children seemed to enjoy.

“The kids were wonderful,” Hodge said. “I went in about six times altogether. I gave them research projects to do and by the third lesson they were very well versed.”

The waystations are important to the butterflies, Hodge said, because they are filled with milkweed, which the Monarchs need to survive. Milkweed is declining throughout the country due to the increased use of herbicides.

“It grows all over, the common variety of milkweed. It is very invasive, and it is considered a weed,” Hodge said. “But the Monarch caterpillars cannot live on anything else.”

The University of Kansas founded the Monarch Watch program, of which the waystation movement is a part, in 1992. According to Hodge, the class planted the milkweed seeds in the classroom and then transferred them outside to the garden when the plants had grown. The positive results were apparent.

“We see them all the time,” said Sarah Henyan, one of the four teachers involved in the project. “My classroom is close to the butterfly garden and I would see at least a couple a day fly by.”

Hodge returned to the school this past September to show the students, who have moved on to fourth grade, how to tag the butterflies so that the University of Kansas can determine the time, day, and latitude and longitude of the butterflies.

The money used to fund the project at Watson Elementary was provided by Astoria Bank.

Hodge plans to work with the current third grade students again this coming January. The school is holding a fundraiser to help pay for the costs of upkeep on the waystation by selling milkweed plants to parents, so that the students can create their own waystations at their homes.