Angela Adams from Alpine School District shared how her school created a monarch butterfly waystation with help from the school, community, and a STEM Action Center Classroom Grant.
On the first day of school a monarch advocate came to our class and gave us information using a presentation about monarchs to get us excited about it. We then raised monarch butterflies and milkweed plants in our classroom. Students got to see the life cycle and got to tag and release the butterflies. After that, we wrote letters to our principal and custodian asking if we could have a butterfly waystation in the front of our school. We also wrote a letter to our mayor asking if the city could plant milkweed around the parks because that’s the only thing that monarch butterflies eat.
Our principal and custodian agreed to help us with a waystation at the school. We first walked around the school and found places that the waystation could possibly go. We found the right spot and the teachers and custodians dug up the grass and dirt for us to put gravel in. Students helped in various ways, some of the students needed to get all the leftover grass and bring it to the dumpster, while some students researched what pollinating flowers work well in Utah and in butterfly waystations. Parents helped put in landscape cloth and rototill the soil. Kilgore gravel donated gravel but we needed to pay someone to deliver and dump it by our waystation area. The gravel came in a truck that dumped it on the sidewalk right next to the waystation, and all the students brought shovels and moved all the gravel into the waystation. It took a lot of muscle and organization to keep everyone safe!
We used the Utah STEM Action Center grant to purchase a decorative fence so students wouldn’t walk through the garden. We put a decorative fence around the waystation so the milkweed didn’t get stomped on throughout the cold, winter months. We waited all winter to finish. When the seeds got here we decided to put in some pavers filled with soil so it would be easy to plant year after year. When spring came, we planted zinnias, cosmos, and Queen Anne’s Lace flower seeds. We also used planter boxes our school already had and planted flowers in them too. Lastly, we bought signs that told all the students to not step on the way station or hurt it in any way. To top it all off, we registered our waystation with monarchwatch.org and Monarch USA. In upcoming years for maintenance, we will have to pull weeds and possibly plant more flowers in substitute for the ones that die over the winter or if we want more flowers and seeds.