Create Your Own Butterfly Garden
Grade Level: Middle School
Content Area: Science/Math/Literature
In this lesson, students will be
working together in groups of three to produce a butterfly garden. This lesson
takes approximately four-sixty minute class periods. The students will be using
math and science skills to make decisions on constructing their gardens.
Students will also have to use researching skills, problem solving, teamwork,
and good communication to successfully complete the project and presentation.
Research will be done by using various books, magazines, and catalogs that
contain information on butterflies, plants, and prices. The Internet may also
be used as an additional resource if the students have school access to the
Internet ready computers. The process and final landscape design for each group
will be presented to the class. As well as a presentation, the students will
complete a group essay, an individual essay, and a worksheet. A gardening
facility is not needed for this project. This is a hypothetical situation in
which the students take on the role of horticulturalist and use similar
processes and techniques to produce on paper a properly landscaped butterfly
garden. Through out the lesson, the biography, An Extraordinary Life: The
Story of Monarch Butterfly by Laurence Pringle could be read aloud by the
teacher, as an incorporation of literacy into the lesson.