PORT BYRON, Ill. — Kindergarten at Riverdale Elementary School always means one thing: monarch butterflies. It's a longstanding tradition to teach a unit about the winged insect as students learn about their life cycle and even raise them.
Every year before the school year starts, the four teachers search every speck of milkweed they can find for monarch eggs. However, this year was harder for them. Sarah Carls noted she hasn't seen many adult monarch butterflies flying around either.
"When I first started in kindergarten about 10 years ago, I could go out behind my house and find 15 to 20 eggs in one time and this time it's taken me multiple trips out there and multiple places to even find enough for my 17 students," Carls said. "It makes me worried about what the future looks like. Will we find as many next year or is this just a fluke year?"
The monarch population has been declining for years. In 2014, it was even considered for the endangered species list. Researchers found the species occupied only 2.2 acres during the 2023-24 winter season in Mexico, a 59% decline from the previous year.
Teacher Tami Claus thinks weather has played an impact in the lower numbers they've seen in the Quad Cities area this year.
"The ones that fly even further north, they've had cold weather and the spring rains," she said. "Then those mammas don't go out there and lay those eggs. Their time of laying those eggs is shorter and the larva, or the caterpillars, need that warmer weather to be able to grow. So I think that's part of it. And they said that this migration at this time of the year, or the time where they are actually laying the eggs now has been pushed back. So they think that the migration will be pushed back a little bit this year."
The Riverdale kindergarteners are learning about nature and their impact on it. But they're also having a lot of fun with it. The kindergarteners can tell you all the facts they've learned: caterpillar poop is called frass, the cremaster connects to the silk button and holds the chrysalis in place, and there's even a chrysalis dance when the butterfly starts to shed its skin.
"You'll ask a graduating senior what they remember about kindergarten and they'll tell you learning about the monarchs," Claus said.
Once their butterfly has emerged, the students will release them for their migration to Mexico. In the spring, the teachers will host Monarch Day and parents will get to learn about how to create their own monarch habitat or how to protect areas monarchs already live in.
Claus has parents of former students tell her they're still raising monarchs.
"Our superintendent told me the other day that, 'I mow around milkweed. I don't mow it down,'" she said. "For parents to learn this from their kids, how important this critter is, is just amazing... It's so cool to know that we all band together for the monarch here at Riverdale."