​After a long winter break, our River Ranger interns from KIPP Denver Collegiate High School finally got back to teaching days! They joined the SPREE team’s excursion training at Overland Pond Park and met the new educators! The river ranger team started the day off playing a new game, set goals for themselves, and worked on some professional development. The interns were paired up with one another to plan how to partner teach one of the four lessons in our 5th grade excursion curriculum. The subjects they teach range from beavers, boating and water safety, pollution in our South Platte River, how to test the health of our river, and how to find critters in Overland Pond.

Campers delved into early Colorado’s past as we reenacted the lives of settlers, pioneers, and prospectors.
Monday: Mountain Men and Women
Campers kicked off the week learning about Colorado before it became a state, and, about some of the people who came West to explore it in the early 1800s. These mountain men and women were typically fur trappers and explorers. Many have Colorado landmarks named after them, like Pike's Peak for Zebulon Pike! After learning some facts and history of some of these historic figures, campers then reenacted some of their lives through making journals to record notes and discoveries in, as well as making some explorer vests! Then, we made a DIY compass to help us explore, and went on a scavenger hunt to learn about some of the important things that these explorers used day to day, or were looking for in their travels- like a beaver pelt and feather pens. We wrapped up the day "fishing" in the creek as some of these mountain mountain men and women would have, too! ​

Ever wonder what it takes to care for a park in the city? This week, campers discovered what it takes to become a steward of the South Platte River by learning about native plants and animals, doing a service project, and educating others about the River. 
Monday: Rangers Know their Park 
Campers kicked off the week the best way SPREE could think of- with learning about scat of course! We studied scat (rubber replicas, not real thankfully!) and tracks of some animals that could be found in the park. We also played a track/animal matching memory game to learn some animal tracks from around the world. 
After learning about these "bio clues," our next thing to investigate was plants. We learned to identify many of the native plants found in and around the park, used some plant guide books, and made some plant rubbings from around the park. We then got to plant some native wildflower seeds of our own! 
Now that campers had learned about plants and land animals of the park, it was time to investigate what lives in the water! We did our first critter crawl of the week- we waded in the creek and caught some crawdads and macroinvertebrates!

We are excited to announce that The Greenway Foundation is starting a new internship program with Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design (DSISD)!
This pilot internship will be run in conjunction with Denver Public Works and will introduce our two high school interns to environmental education, non-profit management, and public outreach, plus so much more! The internship will run throughout the spring semester and the students will be participating for credit through DSISD's career exploration internship opportunities. Learn about our two new interns below!