Cherry Creek Train Campers Explore Iconic Colorado July 16-20

This week of SPREE Summer camp was dedicated to learning all about the state symbols and icons of Colorado. Monday's focus was on Colorado's terrestrial state animals: the mammal, bird, and insect. One of the most well-known state symbols is our state mammal, the bighorn sheep! We made marionette sheep and practiced ramming their heads together! Colorado's state bird is the lark bunting. We learned about these beautiful and unique birds by building some model nests, looking around the park for their food (insects), and acting out some of the silly and unique moves they make! We wrapped up the day by learning about the Colorado hairstreak butterfly. It is bright purple and orange on the inside of its wings, and camouflaged with eyespots on the outside!

Tuesday's focus was on aquatic (or semi-aquatic) creatures. The state fish is the greenback cutthroat trout, which was once thought to be extinct in our state! It was later rediscovered and then made Colorado's state fish. Campers learned about trout habitat, and explored the creek for signs that trout could live there. The state amphibian is the tiger salamander- it is found in all of Colorado's counties! We played games to help us learn about their metamorphic life cycle and how they can regrow their tails if it gets nibbled off by a predator! We also learned about their porous and slimy skin by making our own slime! The state reptile is also semi-aquatic, the painted turtle. Campers explored what it means to be cold blooded, learned the differences between terrestrial and aquatic turtles, and crafted little mini turtles to take home. 

Wednesday was all about plants! The state flower is rocky mountain columbine and the state grass is blue grama. Campers planted seeds of each of these, and made a flower press use for drying and studying other Colorado plants in the future! While learning about the claret cup cactus, campers dissected a piece of cactus, learned about cactus anatomy, made a model cactus, and played games to demonstrate how cacti gain and retain water in arid environments. Lastly, campers learned about the state tree, the blue spruce. We found a blue spruce in the park and learned how to identify it, and learned identification tricks for several other types of Colorado evergreens as well.

We took a field trip to the Colorado state capitol on Thursday! We got a great tour, got to look out over Denver from the dome, and learned lots of cool history about our city and state. It was an awesome (and exhausting) trip! 

Our week wrapped up with Colorado rocks and fossils. After learning the differences between rocks, minerals and gemstones, we could learn which ones are Colorado state symbols: yule marble, rhodochrosite, and aquamarine respectively. Campers learned how these rocks form, played rock bingo in the park, and made their own rock "friend" to take home. Finally, we made it to learning about our state fossil, the stegosaurus! We used silhouettes to make a skeleton, studied the natural history of Colorado dinsosaurs, and learned about dino adaptations. As always, we finished our week with a graduation ceremony!