UES Students Watch Butterflies Take Flight
Each year, Union Elementary STEM and Demonstration School students release hundreds of monarch butterflies during the school's annual butterfly launch. The event is a school-wide celebration where students in kindergarten through fifth grade learn about the monarch butterfly through a variety of different music, art and STEM exercises.
Students harvested the butterflies, tagged them and will now track their journey as they begin a 1,600-mile migration to Mexico. The entire journey takes about one month to complete.
The school continued to pay tribute to 45-year teaching veteran, David Collins, who passed away last year. Collins is the school's former STEM teacher and creator of the butterfly launch. A group of students dedicated to STEM projects around the school are named Collins crew and helped lead the butterfly launch today. Collins' wife, Carolyn Collins, was in attendance for the festivities.