Butterflies

About 100 second and third grade students at Grayhawk Elementary School recently released Painted Lady butterflies that they had raised into the butterfly garden at the school’s outdoor classroom. The school’s Monarch waystation was created to help support endangered species, and the signage used in the way station was donated by Grayhawk’s landscape contractor, DLC Resources. The signage matches what can be found in the GCA Monarch waystation in Montevina.

The biology company that the Paradise Valley School District uses to teach life cycles sent the Painted Lady butterflies to the school when they were about 3 millimeters in length. The caterpillar stage was two weeks long and the chrysalis stage was one and a half weeks long. Some of the caterpillars did not survive the process, leaving about 25 butterflies that the students were able to release.