Building the PopulationButterfly in hand

Lesson Plans

The teacher resources site and materials are used here with permission from Monarch Lab.  It provides a wealth of activities for teachers grades K-12, links to current research, courses, lesson plans, and outreach materials.

Keeping a Monarch Calendar
Create a calendar based on students’ observations of all stages of the monarch life cycle. Detailed illustrations of observations will serve as the basis of the calendar, though written words may be used to accompany and explain the pictures. The calendar can then be used to to describe the life cycle of individual monarchs.
http://www.monarchlab.org/mitc/Resources/LessonPlans/K-2/Keeping_a_Monarch_Calendar.pdf (for grades K-2)

How Many Grandchildren?
Students will calculate the number of progeny that one female monarch butter­fly could produce in one year (4 genera­tions).
http://www.monarchlab.org/mitc/Resources/LessonPlans/3-6/How_Many_Grandchildren.pdf (for grades 3-6)

Measuring Larval Growth and Development
To expose students to data entry and logging information into organized data tables, and to create questions based upon their findings. While this lesson is written to be done with monarchs, the concepts are applicable to any insects.
http://www.monarchlab.org/mitc/Resources/LessonPlans/3-6/Measuring_Larval_Growth_and_Dev.pdf (for grades 3-6)
http://www.monarchlab.org/mitc/Resources/LessonPlans/MS/Measuring_Larval_Growth_and_Dev.pdf (for middle and high school)

Where Is My Food?
Students will conduct a simple experiment to determine if monarch cat­erpillars can find food in a simple maze. There are many possible ways to conduct this experiment, and students should be given the opportunity to provide input into the design and interpretation of their research.
http://www.monarchlab.org/mitc/Resources/LessonPlans/3-6/Where_is_My_Food.pdf (for grades 3-6)


For all of the lesson plans on this web site, CLICK HERE.

For more lesson plans and resources for teachers, go to Monarch Education on the Monarch Butterfly: North America’s Migrating Insect web pages:
http://www.fs.fed.us/monarchbutterfly/teacherandstudent/index.shtml