Butterflies at the Good Shepherd School
Maddie Towle and Jada Wood, class of 2026, visited Good Shepherd School on Monday, May 12, to present a lesson on butterflies to Mrs. Tonya Carron’s kindergarten class. Maddie works every afternoon at Good Shepherd and is a valued member of their child development and education community.
This school year, Maddie and Jada worked together in Science Olympiad on Ecology and Entomology events, closely studying the role of insects in maintaining a healthy and productive environment. Maddie and Jada decided to create a learning activity about butterflies for the Kindergarten at Good Shepherd to inspire others to learn more about the beauty and complexity of the local environment.
Maddie and Jada chose to teach about the Painted Lady butterfly, a common sight in the NEK summer.
The lesson lasted about 35 minutes and included learning about the life cycle, habitats, appearance, and body parts through coloring, singing and dancing, card sorting, and colorful fruit snacks arranged in the form of a fanciful butterfly. The children especially enjoyed curling their tongues to be like the proboscis the butterfly uses to sip flower nectar!
Maddie and Jada brought along 8 actively maturing chrysalises of Painted Lady butterflies, which they have been raising for the past three weeks. Emergence could not be timed to coincide with the children’s experience, but images will be brought to the Kindergarteners. The young students were very interested in how the future butterflies were doing in the chrysalis stage.
The children were rapt in their attention and humorous in their responses to the conversation and activities Maddie and Jada led them through. Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of two teachers to inspire coming generations!
Reported by Ed Eckel
