OCC childhood lab hosts Monarch butterfly waystation

Alongside the children, Orange Coast College’s Early Childhood Lab School has become a home to another group of little critters.

The school has now earned its certification as a Monarch Butterfly Waystation, a home for the winged species to return from migration, seek nourishment and breed.

The school’s director Suzanne Jaglowski said their facility has been working on creating a suitable butterfly habitat for the past three years.

“We had a teacher here who was also a science specialist and she had a lot of caterpillars where she lived,” Jaglowski said. “She brought them in for the children and the children saw them go through their life cycle. It was a huge hit with the kids.”

The school, which enrolls children ages 2 to 5 in a 10 month early education program, allowed the young learners to see the caterpillars form their cocoons and later emerge as monarch butterflies.

To help create a proper habitat for the winged creatures, children planted and watered milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars eat. They also form their cocoons on the milkweed.

“The children learn to have respect and realize how important it is to take care of certain plants that animals depend on,” Jaglowski said. “They get to see the animals. That’s much different than learning about them in a book.”

The students plant the milkweed in pots. When the cocoons are hanging from the plants, they take the pots into a 10-foot-tall cylindrical enclosure.

Once the butterflies break out of their cocoons, the school houses them in the net enclosure for about a day before releasing them.

Monarchs follow a migration path from the northern U.S. and Canada to Southern California and Mexico.

Although the center’s garden is currently empty, Jaglowski expects butterflies to return around March of next year.

“It’s hard to tell if these will be the same butterflies that were here before,” she said. “But it sure would be exciting if they were.”

The school received its waystation certification from Monarch Watch, an organization dedicated to researching and conserving the species.