Butterflies Take Wing at Moorestown Friends Meetinghouse

Forty-two people—28 children and 14 adults—gathered in the Moorestown Friends Meetinghouse to attend Scott Davis’s monarch butterfly workshop, an event hosted by the Friends Enrichment Program this past Sunday.  

By all accounts, it was an inspiring and exciting learning experience for all, with live caterpillars, chrysalises and more than 30 adult butterflies to observe and tag before sending them off on their journey to their wintering grounds in Mexico.  

A resident of Lancaster County, PA, Davis—who holds Pennsylvania State certifications in elementary education and secondary biology—is a gifted natural teacher. For several hours, he held everyone’s attention and invited the young people to ask questions and regard themselves as scientists, keeping in mind there are questions about the monarchs to which there are no known answers yet. 

Excitement reached its peak when the children went outside with Davis and entered a tent he had set up on the front lawn. There he released the butterflies, so the children would be in intimate contact with them as they flew around in that enclosed space, landing here and there in someone’s hair or on someone’s arm.

The ultimate moment came when the butterflies were let out and began to rise into the South Jersey sky.   

Courtesy of Monique Begg, chair of the Friends Enrichment Program