Submitted by Val Toskin, 2nd grade teacher at Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School.

Our second graders at Mirowitz are the keepers of our butterfly gardens.

It is with excitement that they started the school year observing monarchs visiting, then caterpillars munching on our milkweed quickly growing, and growing until one day, they were able to count 4 chrysalises hiding under large leaves.

They watched them changing from bright green to brown. They could see butterfly wings through their thin envelope but, nothing ever came out.  Was it the cold? The late season? And where were the other butterflies? Could they attract more of them?

Our children posed the question “How could we have more pollinators visiting our garden?” More pollinators would mean more flowers, more butterfly, more joyful observation time outside. They visited L.R.E.C., did some research on their own, and decided to build bee hotels to attract native bees who would in turn help them propagate native flower species, and attract more butterflies.

They started on paper by designing our projects, decided on using free repurpose wood and bamboo. Their final products were beautiful, but they quickly fell apart and they had to reassess our project, try new techniques to put materials together, find new ways to pile the bamboo that would resist the weather and little hands, …and they did!

So now, we are waiting to see if we were successful. Are bees going to take refuge and lay egg in our bamboo? Will our garden grow bigger?  What population of pollinator should we attract next and how?

Beside learning a great deal about pollinators, our children have learned so much from this project: how to compromise, how to work together, how to use a drill, how to fall forward and learn from a mistake, and how to be stewards of the Earth.