The South
Carolina Butterfly Project
Butterfly Project Information
The South
Carolina Butterfly Project
1. To assist elementary and middle school teachers with developing and maintaining butterfly gardens for use as extensions of their science classrooms.
2. To provide teachers with support for butterfly garden-based activities. This project is designed to assist teachers in linking science activities across disciplines. In addition to science activities, teachers at participating schools are using the gardens in mathematics, language arts, social studies, and visual arts activities.
3. To develop a student-generated database for 25 common, easily identified butterflies and two day-active hawk moths found in South Carolina.
One activity associated with this project is to conduct census counts of 27 common lepidopteran species. Prior to beginning to make census counts, teachers work with their students to ensure that they can identify the species that occur in their area. For schools electing to conduct census counts, a minimum of one count per month (February through November) is encouraged. However, the actual number of counts varies based on whether the teacher covers all subjects (in which case they only have contact with one class) or if they teach only science (in which case they have contact with several classes). Data entry requires input of both number of students involved and time spent conducting each census so that this variability can be accounted for in the final out-put.
This student-generated census database will be the first of its kind in North America. Although there are several other student-data projects such as The GLOBE Project, The Rivers Curriculum Project, and The Estuary-Net Project, these all involve primarily high school students who are gathering either environmental (wind, rainfall, humidity, cloud cover) or water quality data.
Andersen, C. 1994. A walk-in butterfly vivarium. Science and Children 32: 25-27.
Hall, D.W. Bringing hands-on experience to teaching insect field biology. Journal of College Science Teaching 24: 195-200.
Harris, C. 1991. A garden of butterfly delights. Science and Children. March 1991.
McLeod, J. 1994. From caterpillar to butterfly. Science and Children 32: 22-24.
McLure, J.W. 1994. Biological censuses. Science Activities 31: 8-12.
Sanner, S.H. 1994. How did those bugs get in there? Science and Children 32: 28-29.
Smith, J.G. 1995. Beauty and the butterflies. Science and Children 32: 28-32.
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