WARSAW — Students at a Warsaw school are trying to scoop up as many caterpillars as they can.

They are taking part in a nationwide ‘Monarch Challenge’ to help protect the beautiful species.

Instead of only seeing the life cycle on a piece of paper, it comes alive for students. They’re soaking up every moment from caterpillar capture to butterfly to wherever it may fly next.

All students in the school are venturing out into their yards and fields to find monarch caterpillars.

“I like how we get to pet them and find them,” said Dylan Stouder, a second-grade student.

As Dylan Stouder and his classmates know from school, the best place to look is on milkweed plants.

“Every morning they get to go on a journey to collect these caterpillars,” said Joshua Wall, Washington STEM Academy second-grade teacher. “They get excited. They let them crawl on their hands. They get to see it, touch it, feel it.”

Joshua Wall is a second-grade teacher at the academy. He started doing the monarch challenge with his students 6 years ago.

His class is now working as a team to compile all of the data from the entire school.

“We count them,” continued Wall, “…and we classify them. We sort the caterpillars from monarchs to the ones that are not monarchs and they capture all of that evidence and we put it together on the white board.”

During this process, some students don’t even realize the skills they’re using to learn.

“I actually didn’t even know we were doing math,” said Stouder.

Each caterpillar that’s caught is put in a milkweed habitat in school to develop before their eyes.

“I like how we get to see them turn into chrysalises,” said Stouder. “Some people think ‘Oh, I don’t want to go back to school! It’s so boring!’ and then you actually get to learn a lot about caterpillars and insects.”

Along with students catching many more caterpillars than years past, this year is the first time students are tagging the butterflies.

Little stickers are carefully placed on each monarch’s wing, letting the person know who catches it next that it came from the school.

“Whenever someone – anywhere in the united states – finds one of these butterflies and catches it, they can actually record the location from where they found it,” continued Wall.

Students will stop catching caterpillars this Friday, but the project will continue throughout the school year. As tracking information comes back, students will update an interactive map, calculating how far they’ve traveled.

Source: WSBT