This year, Room 4 have been hard at work on our 2019 Pollinator Project. After we were gifted with our swan plant (which Daisy named Richard) in Term 2, we grew it nice and tall and planted it in the space outside of our classroom. In recent weeks, we have had many Monarch butterflies come and visit our plant to lay eggs. It didn’t take long for 13 caterpillars to grow big and chunky thanks to Richard’s abundant leaves!

Unfortunately, we lost a few of our caterpillars as their predators - the terrifying wasps - began attacking them. We made the decision to move them to safety inside our classroom by cutting off the branches they were chomping on and placing the cut-offs in a vase of water.

When Miss Brown came back to school on Monday, she was surprised to find some adventurous creatures had made their chrysalis on our walls, cupboards and windows! Over the course of the week that we had them we learned that pretty much all caterpillars do is eat, sleep and poop! The cheeky little cocoons were then moved to a netted home (pictured) and have begun hatching this week. It has been mesmerising to see their life cycle from start to finish. Ms Sommers has even taught us how to tag our baby Monarchs so that we can see how far they spread their enchanting wings.

Since Monday, we have released 4 new pollinators into our local environment. It has been such a cool project and we’ve learned so much. Our daily vlogs and data recording and projection has allowed us to try out new skills. Our buddy class, Room 17, even did some incredible writing about our butterflies! However, our job is not yet done, Richard has 3 new caterpillars and we have 7 more chrysalises to hatch in the coming week - busy times in Room 4!
We absolutely cannot wait to be part of this again in 2020 and would encourage everyone to plant as many swan plants as they can to help NZ’s Monarch population prosper!