This Year's Great Symbolic Butterfly Migration

Here is our class paper butterfly.

I love Journey North for Kids!  I know that I've mentioned them before.  This site is chock full of information, scientific study, videos, printable books, etc.  all about migration and seasonal change.

In that spirit, every fall they have a symbolic butterfly migration alongside the travel and migration of the Monarch's to their winter home in Mexico. 

While we were involved in this last year as well, I really like the way that they organized it this year even better.  Instead of each student making a paper butterfly, there is one sent per class.  The new design of the butterfly being mounted to the folder leaves lots of room for self expression and creativity inside the folder.

The butterfly is mounted on the outside of a folder.  The inside is reserved for information about you class (which for us, is also our family).

They suggest putting information, pictures, and their form letter inside to tell the students in Mexico about your class.  Since we home school we told them about our home school class.  I used this free translation website to translate what we wanted to say into the Spanish language (and dialect) that they would understand. 

After completing our butterfly and preparing the envelope and return envelopes as outlined on Journey North's Symbolic Butterfly Migration website I went to the post office to send it to the Journey North offices where they will process all of the butterflies and then send them on to Mexico.  While there is no cost to be involved in this symbolic migration, they gladly accept any donations offered to help them educate the kids, and study the butterflies.

There the teachers and scientists will teach the school children about the Monarchs and how to protect them and care for their wintering sites.  The class will display our butterfly, and be able to write to us if they choose.  I can also check the Journey North site to see which school received our butterfly.

The students will care for our paper butterfly, as they do for the real butterflies, all winter.  And in the spring our paper butterfly will travel back north with the real butterflies and "land" in one of the schools that sent one out in the fall.  Last year we received a paper butterfly back, with Milkweed seeds, and information about the people working to teach the children about the butterflies and the butterflies themselves.

While yesterday was the postmark date for this year (I mentioned this program in earlier posts), I wanted you to know just how wonderful this  program was "first hand".  Hopefully you will consider it next fall, and in the meantime, use the wonderful resources they offer in their website!