Annual Projects
Annual Monarch Butterfly Tagging Workshop
With Steve Cary, scientist working with the Southwest Monarch Study, and author of "Butterfly Landscapes of New Mexico."
Date: TBD Time: TBD This is our most successful project. Every year, Steve Cary, scientist working with the Southwest Monarch Study (a local organization that studies Monarchs) and author of "Butterfly Landscapes of New Mexico, comes and teaches youth how to tag Monarch butterflies out in the field. It's a very fun, educational, and exciting hands on learning experience for youth and the participants love it!
*Project dates vary per year (depends on the time of each annual Monarch season). We start planning a couple months ahead.) |
Annual Monarch Butterfly Release Project
Releasing reared adult butterflies with youth.
Date: TBD Time: TBD Marielle has been raising Monarchs since 2015. And after she, and others, raised them, she invites youth to come release the adult butterflies with her! This is a very fun, inspiring, and cool experience for youth. The butterflies are tagged before being released so that scientists can learn more about their migration all the way in Mexico.
*Project dates vary per year (depends on the emergence of butterflies, based on the chrysalis, which can not be predicted very early). Generally, for this event/project, we'll know about a couple weeks ahead. |
Join our club to become part of these projects! Best part: It's free!
|
PAST PROJECTS
Pollinator Garden at TCS in Summer 2017
June 12, 2017
With the help of grants from the Native Plant Society of Taos, and the Los Jardineros Garden Club to purchase supplies for the garden, the Taos Eco Kids Club created a pollinator garden at Taos Charter School. Biologist Miguel Santistevan with the Biodynamics Association of Taos, gave tips and helped create the garden. Together with the help of students and staff from Taos Charter School, they created a Pollinator Garden full of native flowers. Since then, the school has reported tons of new pollinators coming to the garden, and "it makes the school look really pretty" said teacher Sally Greywolf.
|
Tagging Monarchs with TCS 8th Graders
September 8, 2018
We invited Steve Cary to come and tag Monarchs with the 2018 8th grade class at Taos Charter School. Similar to our annual Monarch tagging with the club, the class learned how to capture, and tag Monarch butterflies. Students had a lot of fun dividing up into groups and chasing after the butterflies, and were very excited when they caught their first butterfly! It was a very successful project, once again, and we would love to do more of these kind of class projects and collaborate with other groups. Let us know if you'd like to collaborate and have us bring Steve again to your class or group!
|
Raising Monarch Butterflies since 2015
September-October, 2015
In 2015, the founder of the Taos Eco Kids Club raised Monarch Butterflies. She originally wanted to raise them to help their population numbers rise, and later decided to make it her school science fair project. She ended up winning at the National AISES Junior Division Science Fair Competition. The whole journey of raising the butterflies from eggs that she found in her backyard, to releasing them was something that changed her life. See the full story on YouTube: The Magic of the Monarch Butterfly. This has been an ongoing hobby of hers and she plans to keep doing this with youth for her lifetime!
|
We'd love to collaborate with your organization, or bring our projects to your classroom or school, so more kids can get involved! Feel free to let us know and we can organize something! The more the merrier!
Bucket List
- Collaborating with Susie Fiore of FITaos and going out to find Monarch eggs in the wild with youth.
- Creating more pollinator gardens around town.
- Creating a giant pollinator garden in the road median strips of dirt.
- Creating a Monarch Waystation garden around town.
- Creating a Wildlife Habitat.
- Planting milkweed for Monarch butterflies around town.
- Having Dr. Ubelacker, a scientist who's passion is cactuses, come and talk about the pollinator flowers.
- Making pollinator "hotels" for youth to take home.
- Planting trees around town.
- Native plant gardening workshop with Miguel Santistevan
- Creating recycling stations/bins around Taos for trash that can't be recycled in Taos like plastic, them creating a group of volunteers who take these bins to Santa Fe to be recycled. No trash will be left behind, as we really need to act and take this global environmental crisis seriously!
Experience it Yourself
Become part of a life changing legacy. |