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Fourth-graders’ learning takes flight with multi-subject collaboration

Fourth-graders experienced a multi-subject curriculum covering the lifecycle of the monarch butterfly through the lens of art, science, and spanish. In art teacher Jody Knoop’s class, students traced over a butterfly stencil, created negative space, and learned transitional shading using a limited color palette. After cutting out their butterflies, students will create a caterpillar out of wood, and larva out of paper mâché for their fulcrum, which will simulate a flying butterfly and its lifecycle. During science teacher Kate LaBare’s class, students cared for monarch caterpillars and witnessed, first-hand, the larvae emerge from the chrysalises as beautiful butterflies, which they released into the wild. To symbolize the monarch migration from America to Mexico, students created their own paper butterflies using origami, paper layers, and free-hand drawing techniques to send through the mail to their pen pals in Mexico. Along with the paper butterflies, students also wrote letters in Spanish about monarchs to their pen pals for world language teacher Megan Hayes’ class.