Children, monarchs, and Wild Ones volunteers

Bob Siemer at the monarch display for Rockwood’s Nature Night

Nature Night at the Center for Creative Learning in Rockwood School District was a recent event for second grade students who had been studying nature and would be designing a Play Naturescape that could be put in their own back yards.

Wild Ones members Ann Early and Bob Siemer set up a display to help the children and their families learn the importance of native plants and wildflowers.  Ann is the St. Louis chapter liaison to national Wild Ones for the Wild for Monarchs campaign, so naturally there was a lot of talk about monarchs.

Tabling events to spread the word about the virtues of growing native plants ranked second in importance (community yard tours was first) in the recent member survey.  It looks like we are off to a great start!

Monarch display explaining the importance of native plants

Ann writes, “On the right and left ends of the table you will see some new items we added for this event; on the right end I had copies of two different coloring sheets showing monarchs and their life cycle—these were items I printed off the kids’ activities part of the national Wild for Monarchs web info.  Nearly all of the kids picked up these coloring sheets to take home.  On the left side of the table you will see our laptop with a little presentation Bob created for the kids entitled ‘What do Monarch Butterflies Eat?’ He went through this brief and basic slide show with all of the kids showing them how important it is to have milkweeds in order to have monarchs.”

Ann Early at the monarch display

“The kids were all very interested in this slide show. We also handed out our Wild for Monarchs brochures to interested parents and talked about where to obtain native plants.  We provided the chapter membership brochure to several folks, including teachers and staff at the school.  They had told us to prepare for 100 kids. I do not think we had quite that many but I’m guessing we had around 50 or so, along with their parents.  It was nice to hear that some of the kids and parents were aware of the recent decline in monarch numbers, and that some families had natives planted in their yards and planned to add more!  The parents and staff seemed to appreciate our participation and the information we had provided.”