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“Monarch Mania” Leaves No Child Inside
Lakeland Christian School, Lakeland, FL
A version of this article originally appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Creation Care magazine.
Since 1998, “Monarch Mania” has been an annual event at Lakeland Christian School. It started with a local butterfly entrepreneur, Gil Daigneau, who stopped by the school and left elementary principal Fred Wiechmann a monarch chrysalis hot-glued to a Golden Dewdrop plant.
Wiechmann immediately saw the opportunity to engage all 475 elementary students with the wonder of God’s creation. “Gil’s jaw dropped in amazement when I suggested putting a chrysalis in the hand of each student in the elementary school,” said Wiechmann. “He had no idea what he was getting into.” To make it happen, Daigneau and Wiechmann grew 800 milkweed plants, obtained monarch larvae from the University of Kansas’s “Monarch Watch,” transferred them to the plants with tiny paint brushes, and watched as the larvae devoured all 800 plants.
Daigneau camped out overnight in a lawn chair as the larvae pupated, to keep fire ants away. Wiechmann laboriously glued 475 chrysalises to the lids of McDonalds’ sundae cups used as viewers, and then counted off the days to the emergence of the butterflies. A school-wide celebration followed.
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The form of Monarch Mania has changed from year to year, since then. This year it involved each fifth-grader sharing with a buddy from the kindergarten class what they learned about monarch metamorphosis and about spiritual transformation. The Monarch butterfly’s lifecycle is used as an illustration of one of nature’s “inside-out changes” as the creature changes through its various stages of metamorphosis. Says Wiechmann, “We use Romans 12:2 as our signature verse emphasizing an ‘inside-out change’ in the heart of the believer as we grow in our relationship with Christ following our new birth. We called this ‘being metamorphoo(ed),’ from the Greek word for ‘transformed’ in that verse.”
This year, many students released their butterflies with their parents in LCS’s schoolyard habitat, known as “Faith’s Forest”—a National Wildlife Federation-certified Schoolyard Habitat and a Monarch Watch Waystation.
Contact: www.lcsonline.org
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