By Heather McDonald

A monarch butterfly about 10 minutes after it emerged from its chrysalis is still too wet to move its wings.
(Heather McDonald photo)

The fourth-grade girls scurried to the plastic, flexible container. Hannah Rekowski reached it first and quickly began unzipping the top while Lila McGuire tried to hold it still. The delicate creature dangling from the lid swayed with the jostling.

“Oh, it’s fine, we can take them out,” Hannah said, jabbering with excitement as she tried to right the insect on her finger.

The poor thing went limp and flipped back upside down.

“It’s wings are still too wet. See?” Hannah said as she held it up; it seemed to cling in desperation to the pad of her finger.

The newly “born” butterfly was barely 10 minutes old.

It is the last one the fourth-grade class watched transform from caterpillars just millimeters long into chrysalises and then emerge as Monarchs. Last week, they released it- a male -into the butterfly garden in the back of Amherst Elementary School, each student calling out “adios.”

For the past five weeks, students in fourth-grade teacher Kathleen Nicholson’s class have studied butterflies, their life cycle, their differences, their similarities, their behaviors, and they’ve tracked a variety of data on them.

The last of 14 butterflies whose life cycles were observed and documented by students in Kathleen Nicholson’s fourth-grade class in Amherst hangs from Hannah Rekowski’s finger this week.
(Heather McDonald photo)

Fourth-grader Daniel Eichmann prepares to release a monarch in the Amherst school garden as classmates watch, a few days after it emerged from its chrysalis in Kathleen Nicholson’s class.
(Heather McDonald photo)

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