The Angevine Middle School 4th quarter class was a hybrid class with some students attending online and the others attending in person. When the quarter started, it was the first time many of the students had been to school in a year and, although the group had been in a cohort all year, they didn’t know each other very well. During a usual CAP class, we spend some time team building, but this time it was more important than ever.

We did a lot of hands-on projects that required teamwork. We worked in teams to learn how to do a bear hang and clean up the school grounds. We built lots of shelters. We were blessed with plenty of snow this semester, so we made snow shelters and quinzhees. The students worked in groups to make tarp shelters several ways and we finished up by making a debris shelter.

The students chose to study wildfire as their Action Project. We learned how to make fires and all about the Fire Triangle. We shared stories of last summer’s fires. We had a class on wildfire taught to us virtually by an instructor from Cal-Wood Education Center, the site of last summer’s Cal-Wood Fire. Finally, we used fire boards to make wildfire simulations and then we compared the results to a new idea we had which was to make wildfire simulations out of kinetic sand. The students made the kinetic sand and then built landscapes out of it in fire pans. The semester ended in a sweet way—with marshmallows!

Written by AMS CAP Instructor Erin Angel

See more photos from the course here!

CAP at Angevine Middle School is made possible in part by a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) through the Nature Kids/Jovenes de la Naturaleza program. Click here to learn more!