It’s Monarch Hatching Season

Last night my 8 year old, M, was reading her DK Anthology of Butterflies and Moths when I came up to check in at bedtime. We're at the tail end of raising a clutch of monarch butterflies from caterpillars that she found in the milkweed patch of our yard. Over the past three years, monarch hatching season has quickly become a beloved family tradition that all of us at Our Homeschool Garden house look forward to. As we sat together, flipping through the pages of her book, I found myself drawn to the detailed and unique wing patterns, the vivid colors, and especially the symmetry of each insect we viewed. M showed me her favorite wing patterns, and the picture she found of the swallowtail butterfly we have in our terrarium, awaiting emergence with our last monarch in chrysalis form. 

For the past fifteen years I’ve been a Reggio Inspired classroom teacher, and so I’m always on the look out for ways to weave the academic basics into everyday play, and build on the interdisciplinary nature of children’s interests. Right now, one of my daughter’s biggest interests is catching, raising and releasing the bugs and other small critters we find in and around our garden. For the first time in my teaching career, M is my only student, and our primary classroom is right here in our homeschool garden, and the studio we built out upstairs overlooking it. This means, I’m now finding myself constantly noticing and thinking about bugs. I see them everywhere, one’s I don’t think I”ve ever noticed before. I’m also thinking about and seeking out new ways I might connect her interest in insects with writing practice, math, history, communities & culture, sustainability practices, and art & creative expression. 

So as I was noticing the symmetry of those beautiful moth and butterfly wings with M the other night, memories of making paint and paper folded hearts and butterfly wings in past years’ classrooms flooded my brain. I’d already been contemplating what art materials and techniques I wanted to dive into now that we’ve more or less settled into this year’s homeschool routines, and I just gave M a new set of acrylic paint tubes for her birthday earlier in the week. It occurred to me that M might not have tried the paper folding symmetry painting technique before. I knew she’d love having a collection of painted butterflies to turn into a mobile, make into characters in a story play, or some other magical use for them she might dream up on her own.

After I said goodnight, I wrote the symmetry painting project idea in my teacher’s notebook, and the next morning I set the supplies out on the table. I wanted an example to show my very visually-oriented learner, so I cut out two butterflies from a folded, blank index card and dabbed on a few splotches of black and orange paint, straight from the tube, leaving the other butterfly to invite M to try it out. It had been a while since I’d done this particular art activity myself, so I also wanted to take a test run on my own before walking her through the cutting, painting and folding techniques. When she settled into the studio that morning, I shared my project idea with her, and showed her the one I made. She paused for a moment, and I thought for sure she was going to pass on it, but instead she came over to the craft table and hopped up on her stool. 

I helped her pop open up the remaining new tubes of paint, and after first squeezing some paint into her palette and brushing it onto the paper wing, she settled into a rhythm of dabbing just the right amount of paint on the paper so it would mix but not ooze out when the wings were folded back together to transfer her design from the painted wing to the blank one. I love doing this activity with young artists because it taps into one of my greatest joys as a teacher - watching the excitement of discovery wash over the face of a child who just learned, saw or did something amazing or surprising for the very first time.

As we sat together, M painted three colorfully patterned butterflies that morning, inviting her dad and I to each paint one with her too. We wrapped up the activity with a collection of six butterflies drying on the table, and a very satisfied student and teacher. We only had time for one thing during morning’s block of homeschool - we had some errands to run and a few weekend special events to prepare for in the afternoon - painting symmetry print butterflies as the warm morning light filled our studio was about as perfect an activity as I could have hoped for. 

I know our homeschool moments won't always come together or flow so beautifully, but right now I’m going to hang onto this win and use the experience as inspiration for next week’s agenda in Our Homeschool Garden. I know M will have some amazing and creative ideas for what we can do with our new collection of butterflies as we stretch the monarch hatching season as long as we can. I want to help her level up her illustration skills and it’s been a while since we’ve updated her “Bugs I’ve Found” journal, so I’ll research some butterfly and moth drawing guides for us, and perhaps she’ll get inspired to make her own comic, poem or short story about them, as we’ve done with previous interests. Only time will tell where this interest will lead us, and in homeschooling, the mystery of what will come next is half the fun of learning. But right now, I’m just trying to stay present in this moment, as we approach the Autumn Equinox, and soak in the final golden hours of summer with afternoons of bug hunting with M while there are still bugs around for us to observe.