Tracks & Scat Holiday Camp recap

On Friday, curious campers joined SPREE for Tracks & Scat Holiday Camp. We spent the day learning how to identify animals that live in Colorado from the clues they leave behind. Even with some brief rain, we spent most of the day outside! 

The first activity was focused on tracks. You can tell a lot about an animal just from their footprints, or tracks. We started our exploration by making some mystery human tracks. We used observation skills to determine which camper made the track based on the design of their shoe bottoms. After making these observations, we learned more about specific animal tracks by playing a matching game. We ended the activity with a craft- track soap! Using animal track molds, we made track shaped hand soap- Campers can wash their paws using their paw shaped soap!

After our morning snack, we began our second activity about scat. Scat is the scientific word for animal poop. As scientists at SPREE, we use the word scat. We began the activity with a board game, all about local animal scat! Campers needed to make it from the starting line to the finish line, answering trivia questions along the way. After learning about different animals and the scat they produce, we went on a nature hike to discover scat in our park. We learned how to hypothesize which animal left the scat based on location, size, shape & content of the scat. For example, small bean-shaped scat found at the bottom of a tree could belong to a squirrel! Scat found near water with wood shavings likely came from a beaver. Some scientists can even tell if the animal was male or female- we aren’t that good at SPREE…. Yet!

Because of a rain shower, and lightning being reported close to camp, we rearranged our final two activities. Typically, we would get into the River for Critter Crawl after lunch. Because of weather, we did our wrap-up activity. For this activity, we created our own SPREE Track & Scat field guides. Field guides are so useful in helping to identify animals we see in nature. If you don’t see the animal, but only tracks or scat, it is helpful to have a field guide specifically for tracks & scat, which is what we created! Campers can take this useful tool on their next adventure in Denver or the mountains to identify the critters of Colorado!

We concluded our day with a Critter Crawl, when we get into our River with nets to catch the small macroinvertebrates that live in its water. This activity is always a favorite of teachers and campers. We caught all sorts of critters in our River! While at critter crawl, we kept our eyes open for scat and tracks to identify to learn what animals may have recently visited the South Platte River.

Tracks & Scat Holiday Camp was such a blast! We had a lot of fun with all our campers sleuthing around and identifying animals based on the clues they leave behind. See you soon along the River!