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SPREE called all budding inventors, architects, and engineers! Campers spent a week designing, building, and inventing while we looked to nature for inspiration. Monday: Plant Inspiration We started out our week of camp investigating engineers in nature with plants! Plants are amazing nature engineers from how they grow, how their seeds move, and how they survive. First, we focused on different ways that some native seeds move. There is a wide variety of techniques even in plants we can find around camp! Hitchhiker seeds travel by sticking on to a person or animal, and eventually fall off in a new place. We put socks over our hands and brushed them on the grasses around camp and discovered many seeds sticking to our "fur!" Some seeds we discovered of this variety: burs, goat heads, rabbit brush, wild licorish, and cheat grass. And did you know the invention of velcro was inspired by these types of seeds? Next, we talked about fruit seeds. They get eaten by animals and come out with scat- ready to grow with fertilizer already there! We made "scat" seed balls with dirt, clay, and seeds. Then, we investigated some seeds that travel by wind, like cottonwood and helicopter seeds from box elder trees. We made our own paper helicopters to demonstrate how these seeds move! Another cool way that some seeds move is by water! Wheat grass seeds are shaped like tiny canoes to help them float to new places to grow. We made paper boats as well as craft boats to recreate how these seeds travel! Finally, we wrapped up our day by planting some seeds of our own to take home to grow!
Tuesday: Underground Engineers There are many cool animals that live underground that are great excavators, diggers, architects, and engineers! First, we talked about a type of tiny engineer that is found nearly all over the world- ants! They can build huge and complex structures underground, just by instinct and communicating by pheromones! We painted our own underground ant structures as a craft after learning more about ant life cycles and the structures they build. Next, we learned about prairie dogs and the underground towns that they construct! Like ants, they create many rooms, each with a different purpose. We drew our own prairie dog towns, learned about their adaptations, and played a survival game! We wrapped up our day talking about how and why human engineers work and explained the steps that engineers take to solving a problem: Identify the Problem (What do we need to do? What is our goal?), Brainstorm (the most important step!), Design (blueprint), Build (may be a model version first), Test and Evaluate (Then may need to go back to step 4, until it is perfect and safe and ready-to-go!), and Share the Solution! Then, campers started brainstorming ideas for inventions of their own!
Wednesday: Engineers of the Air Birds are well known for their engineering skills and creativity when building nests. There are many more types of nests that birds build that you may not think of at first! We first discussed some different types of nests that some Colorado birds build: like a flicker making a cavity nest, a grebe making a floating nest, and a swallow making a mud nest on a bridge! Next, we played an eagle game- did you know bald eagles hold the record for the world's biggest bird nest? Then, we learned about the tiniest bird nest builders, hummingbirds, and made some tiny craft versions ourselves! Another common type of flying nest builder is bees. Campers learned about many different types of bees, wasps, and yellowjackets that call Colorado home- and about the unique types of nests that each one builds. Then, we focused on an amazing non-native bee engineer, the honey bee! They build amazing hexagon honeycombs and of course make honey! We crafted a honeycomb of our own with some cute bees to go with it!
Thursday: Field Day Our typical Thursday is when we get to venture over to Confluence park and explore a new area! Today was no exception as campers were on the lookout for human, plant, and animal engineers in the park. We hunted for spider webs, looked for bird nests, and found some cool things in nature through a scavenger hunt. Then, we painted some of the engineers and their structures we saw in watercolors! We wrapped up the day with a critter crawl in the South Platte River at the confluence!
Friday: Beavers SPREE's favorite type of engineer, actually an ecosystem engineer, is a beaver! Beavers are fantastic builders that can have huge impacts on their environments by changing water flows and creating new habitats for other animals! First, campers focused on learning about beaver adaptations- they have unique bodies suited for their water and land lifestyle and building skills! We had campers dress up as a beaver- complete with flippers, a tail, goggles, and more to discover how they have different bodies than people. Next, we compared and contrasted them to a rodent cousin that they are often easily confused with- muskrats! By the end of the activity, campers were experts in both! After learning about physical adaptations, campers then focused more on beaver behavioral adaptations- like their building skills! We made our own mini beaver lodges, played a dam building game, and built mini dams along the creek. Finally, like every Friday, we wrapped up our week with a camper graduation ceremony where we celebrated campers being eco engineering experts!
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Summer campers had a great time learning about many Colorado "Creepy Creatures" over the week! Whether you love creepy creatures or they give you the heebie-jeebies, these critters are a part of Colorado! Campers joined us for a week of learning about animals like spiders, bats, and snakes while we learned facts, dispelled myths, and found that they may be cool creatures after all! Monday: Slimy Scaries We kicked off the week with learning about some creatures that may be slimy and scary! But we discovered that not all of these creatures were slimy after all! Campers started by becoming Colorado snake experts. We learned about the many snakes that call Colorado home, analyzed shedded snake skin and talked about its importance to snakes, and played some snake games. The next animals we learned about really were slimy! Leeches and worms are common in Colorado waterways and underground. We learned about some cool adaptations that these animal cousins have, discovered how they are both important in their ecosystems, and got to go into the River to try and catch some! (Leeches and aquatic worms can both be found in the South Platte!)
 Tuesday: Freaky Fliers Many flying creatures can scare people or gross them out- which is why we focused on some of these on Tuesday! First we learned about bats! Bats are an animal that many people are afraid of, but many of the reasons people are afraid are not actually true about bats! We learned about 4 common bat species found in Colorado (out of a total of 19!), dispelled some bat myths, practiced some echolocation skills, and played a bat game to learn about what they need in their habitats in order to survive. Next, we learned about bees. Many people are afraid of bees for good reason, but they are also pretty cool creatures who do great things for our Colorado ecosystems! Campers learned a bit of bee sting safety, learned how bees see (in ultraviolet!) and made our own sun paper craft, and we worked on our dancing skills when we learned how bees communicate with each other! When we went down to the river for our daily exploration time, we were not expecting to find many flying creatures in the water- we just expected there to be some in and around it, of course! But we learned that many of the macroinvertebrate creatures that buzz around the park actually start their lives in the river and may even spend the majority of their lives there! The larval or nymph stages of many creatures like dragonflies, damselflies, blackflies, and mayflies all start as little macroinvertebrates in waterways like the South Platte! Kids loved catching some of these little critters in their nets. We wrapped up our day of flying creature by learning about vultures. Colorado has two types of vultures: black vulture and turkey vulture. These animals gross out a lot of people because of their diet of dead animals, their cooling system of urinating on themselves, and their defense mechanism to vomit on predators, but they are pretty cool creatures too! Campers learned that vultures can eat so much carrion that they can increase their body weight by 5% in just one day! Campers then got to measure their wingspans compared to a vulture's.
Wednesday: Big Baddies Most of the creepy creatures that we talked about so far in the week have been pretty small, but there are some big animals in Colorado that people may be afraid of too! On Wednesday campers learned about mountain lions and coyotes. We acted out what to do in an encounter with each of these creatures, learned how to yip and howl like a coyote, and participated in a story about how and why mountain lions are a keystone species. To wrap up the day, the campers learned about a smaller type of creepy creature, am arachnid that lives in Colorado- scorpions! We learned about the 3 types of scorpions in Colorado: Northern Scorpion, Northern Desert Scorpion, and Common Striped Bark Scorpion. Scorpions have some super cool adaptations: they glow under black light, they have stingers they use on prey (CO types not dangerous to people), they have been around for 400 million years, they can live up to a year without food, and the mothers carry their babies on her back until they are old enough to survive on their own. Campers got to try and be mother scorpions and carry some poker chips on their backs while they crawled through an obstacle course!
Thursday: Pesky Park Dwellers (Field Day!) Campers love getting to venture out to a new space on Thursdays for field day! The group headed to nearby Commons Parks to investigate some new creepy creatures that could be found in Denver or other nearby park and natural spaces. Through games and activities, campers learned about porcupines, skunks, and raccoons!
Friday: Creepy Crawly Spiders Campers spent the day learning about spiders! We started by learning about one of the types of spiders we commonly see around Denver and the park- orb weavers! These cool spiders make the "classic" spider web with the spiral or target shape. We learned some cool facts, went on a spider hunt in the park, played spider tag, and made a spider web craft! During our critter crawl we learned about fishing spiders and kept an eye out for them near the river. Next, we had an extra special guest speaker from the Butterfly Pavilion! The presentation was on invertebrate classification. In small groups, the campers looked at examples of different species and determined what was the same across all the samples they were looking at (how many legs, body parts, antennae). Then, the campers got to touch a cockroach and look at a black widow! Finally, we wrapped up our week with a graduation ceremony!
Campers took a peek under the River’s surface and discovered the secret lives of the plants and animals that live there. They found the crawdads, clams, and many other creatures that call our urban waterways home! Monday: Plants and Macroinvertebrates The mission for our SPREE campers this week was to become underwater investigators of the waterways of Denver. We started the week by looking at some underwater plants and tiny animals. The tiny animals are called aquatic macroinvertebrates. We first helped campers break down the words. Aquatic = water, Macro = big enough to see with the naked eye, Invertebrate = no backbone. The creatures we learned about throughout the week live in the water, don’t have a backbone, and can be seen without a microscope. In our waterways, we frequently see two types of macros- ones that evolve, and ones that do not. Today, we focused on macros that don't evolve. First, we learned about clams! We have some in Denver- they are filter feeders that even help filter and clean the water that they live in! We also learned about leeches and aquatic worms. They also don't evolve, but still play key roles in the river ecosystem! We played a leech game to learn about how they move and communicate in the water. Then, we got to explore in the creek and catch some of these critters and learn about them hands-on! Next, campers learned about some different types of water plants. We learned about three types: emergent, that grow from the bottom of the water and stick out of the surface; floating, which live on top of the water's surface; and submergent, plants that live exclusively underwater. We acted out the different plant types and made a craft diorama of the different plants living in the water.
Tuesday: Macroinvertebrates that Evolve After covering macros that don't evolve on Monday, campers got to delve into the diverse and incredible world of evolving aquatic insects! Many macros that live underwater live there for the majority of their lives, even years, before evolving to a land animals for the last short portion of their lives. First, we learned about one of SPREE's favorite macro insects to find in the water- dragonfly nymphs! We had a camper dress up as a dragonfly nymph as we learned about their many amazing adaptations. Next, we made our own craft dragonfly! Then, we played some games where the campers got to act out the adaptations and movement of many river macros including caddisflies, stone flies, craneflies, and mayflies! In another game, we learned how black fly larva catch their prey in the water. When we went down to the creek to investigate the macros in the water, we learned that they all have different pollution tolerances. We got catching critters and sorted them out- and found many macros that have very low tolerance for pollution, a great sign for our waterways!
Wednesday: Crawdads Some of the coolest critters in the creek are crawdads! SPREE educators and campers alike love these creatures so much that we dedicated an entire day to them! Our first activity of the day focused on crawdad anatomy and adaptations. We dressed up a camper as a crawdad with antennae, pincers, extra legs, and more! Then, campers got to try and experience life with an exoskeleton firsthand with another adaptation activity. Next, we learned about many crawdad survival skills. We played a game to discover the types of food crawdads eat. And, we played a game of crawdad hide and seek as they are experts at hiding in the water! Then of course we went into creek to try our hand at catching crawdads! Many SPREE campers love catching these creatures and finding them in the water- they are actually quite common in Denver! We wrapped up the day with singing one of the SPREE force special agent songs about Crusher the crawdad!
Thursday: Fish and Beavers As we neared the end of the week, we spent our last two camp days learning about even more water-dwelling creatures of Denver waterways- fish and beavers! First, we learned about Colorado's state fish- the Greenback Cutthroat Trout. We played a trout board game to learn about trout in Colorado, and played trout tag to learn about trout predators and prey. Next, we learned about some fish adaptations by making some fish prints, looking for small fish in the water, and playing fishy slime tag! We wrapped up our day by playing some beaver games- "beavers and lodges" and "be the beaver."
Friday: Fabulous Fish We were so excited to have guests from Environmental Learning for Kids (ELK) to help us learn even more about Colorado fish! Their high school educators taught the campers about fish adaptations, taught them about macroinvertebrates, lead them through a fishy game, and the campers even got to practice some fishing skills! We finished up our week with one more critter crawl for the week, then wrapped it all up with a graduation ceremony for all of our expert underwater investigator campers!
Summer campers had a great time learning about many Colorado "Creepy Creatures" over the week of June 10-14! Whether you love creepy creatures or they give you the heebie-jeebies, these critters are a part of Colorado! Campers joined us for a week of learning about animals like spiders, bats, and snakes while we learned facts, dispelled myths, and found that they may be cool creatures after all! Monday: Slimy Scaries We kicked off the week with learning about some creatures that may be slimy and scary! But we discovered that not all of these creatures were slimy after all! Campers started by becoming Colorado snake experts. We learned about the many snakes that call Colorado home, analyzed shedded snake skin and talked about its importance to snakes, played some snake games, and even got to meet one of the River Ranger's pet ball python that she brought in to say hello (and she wasn't slimy at all!). The next animals we learned about really were slimy! Leeches and worms are common in Colorado waterways and underground. We learned about some cool adaptations that these animal cousins have, discovered how they are both important in their ecosystems, and got to go into the River to try and catch some! (Leeches and aquatic worms can both be found in the South Platte!)
Week 1 of SPREE summer camp started off with a fun theme of "Special Agent Training!" Kids at both camps spent the week of June 3-7 learning how to care for the River and environment, defeat some SPREE villians, and how to catch some crawdads in the River and Creek! Monday: What is a Special Agent? Campers received a mission from Chompers, head of the SPREE Force, to learn to become special agents during camp this week, as well as learn some facts about water in Denver to get an idea of what challenges they may face over the week. Campers started by thinking about all the different ways they use water every day. There are more direct and indirect uses than you might think of at first! We also talked about the many different ways people in Denver need and use water- in homes, businesses, farms, factories, etc. We acted out how it can be challenging to share this limited resource, and discussed ideas on how to make it work. Next, campers learned that this water actually comes from the River right next to camp- the South Platte! We learned that the River starts in the mountains, and the water in it actually runs all the way to the Ocean! For our special agent skills course of the day, we got to get introduced to the many Agents of the SPREE Force and learn about the special skills they each have. Then, we practiced some skills of our own through activities and games. We made disguises, practiced getting to know each other and being a good teammate, and honed our observation skills. Finally, it was everyone's favorite part of the day- critter crawl! We learned about what critters can be found in the River and Creek, how they indicate water quality, and we got to get in the water to catch some! We were challenged by Crusher the crawdad- and right hand man of Chompers, to each catch and hold a crawdad this week! We all wrapped up the day with the start of our Special Agent Code of Conduct list that we added to throughout the week as we learned more and more!
This week at SPREE HQ, campers delved into local ecosystems and explored the food webs of the parks and waterways of Denver. We started off with the basics: learning what all living things need to survive. All living things need: air, water, soil/food, and sunshine! We planted our own little bean seeds to see if this would prove true (and they did grow during the week!). We also learned about another very important aspect of food chains on Monday as well, "FBIs!" Fungus, Bacteria, Insects, and Scavengers are very important to food webs and ecosystems because they help balance everything out. They help to break down things that are dead, and make new resources for the other living things to survive. And, we learned that even though we can't see it, bacteria are everywhere! We collected some samples from around camp, and grew some little bacteria colonies in agar plates over the week! To wrap up our day, we played a fun tag game outside where everyone got to play a role in the food web!
On Tuesday, we took our knowledge about food webs and applied to our own park. We learned to identify some plants around camp, acted out predator and prey relationships of local animals, and explored the river and how it connects to the park food web. Then, we started our project of making ecosystem dioramas.
We switched our focus to the river food web on Wednesday. We learned about different types of aquatic plants that live in the water, discovered the crazy adapations of some aquatic macroinvertebrates, and made some craft dragonflies. Then, we caught some critters in the river and sorted them by where they sit in the food web.
Thursday was field day! We walked to nearby Commons park to explore the food webs of plants, animals, and the pond there. We did scavenger hunts, played games, and looked for signs of animals that live in the park that we couldn't see.
The week wrapped up with a day themed around ecosystem engineers and keystone species. We did activities about how different animals big and small such as wolves, bees, and beavers have huge impacts on the food webs and ecosystems that they live in. Then, as always, we wrapped up the week with a graduation ceremony for all the campers!
This week at camp, campers broke out the butterfly nets, magnifying lenses, and bug boxes as they explored the secret lives of mini-beasts! Insects and other tiny critters often get overlooked as animals, but campers this week had a great time learning about their amazing adaptations. On Monday, we focused on herbivorous (plant eating) insects. We acted out bee adaptations and how they pollinate plants while looking for nectar. Another cool plant- eating insect we learned about are butterflies, and their larval stage, caterpillars. We acted out the lives of caterpillars in a obstacle race, and learned about symmetry in nature while making our own paper butterflies.
Our focus switched to carnivorous insects on Tuesday. We first learned about the amazing hunting skills and adaptations of the praying mantis. Next, we investigated an insect that isn't usually remembered as a predator- ladybugs! We discovered their unique life cycle (and realized that there are more ladybugs in the park than we thought!), and acted out their lives and hunting skills through some games. While doing critter crawl, we also discovered carnivorous insects in the water- dragonfly nymphs! We also had a special guest presentation from the Butterfly Pavillion come in on Tuesday. We learned even more cool facts about mini-beasts and invertebrates and got to meet some very cool hissing cockroaches they brought!
On Wednesday we learned about a different type of mini-beasts, arachnids! Arachnids aren't insects. They have 8 legs, and have different body types and adaptations than insects do. We dispelled some myths about spiders, learned about different types of spiders, and went on a spider hunt. We created spider gliders, made a spider web craft, and played a spider web game! During critter crawl, we learned about and looked for fishing spiders!
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(303) 455-7109 - Greenway
(303) 743-9720 - SPREE 1855 S Pearl St, Suite 40 Denver, CO 80210 Staff Contact Info FEIN: 51-0193575 |
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