Submitted photo Children examine a Monarch butterfly as they learn about the creature at The Children’s Tree House.

The Children’s Tree House, non-profit, nature-based child care center, has been able to have a lot of hands on interaction in the life-cycle of the Monarch Butterflies, thanks to Brett Billings, Tracy McCleaf, Chelsea McKinney of NCTC (National Conservation Training Center) and Travis Weller (a summer volunteer at NCTC). Over the summer Brett, Tracy and Travis have been collecting monarch eggs and caterpillars, of all life stages, so that they can be tagged and tracked as they migrate back to Mexico this fall.

Many of the monarch caterpillars that were captured this summer have gone through he life-cycle changes at The Children’s Tree House and the children have watched them transform from caterpillars to butterflies.

After they emerged from their chrysalis, the children were joined by some of the NCTC FWS (Fish and Wildlife Service) staff who have taught the children how to tag and release the butterflies back into the wild. Hopefully some of the butterflies tagged will be found in Mexico and the children will know that they have made it back to their winter homes.

For more information on tagging butter flies please follow the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Vz1hJRPos.