If you were spending a beautiful, snowy winter day cross-country skiing in the mountains and an unexpected storm suddenly made it impossible to return to your car before night fall, would you know how to survive? On Saturday, January 24, 2009, a group of adults headed into the mountains to participate in the Cottonwood Institute’s… Read more »
Natural and Archeological Wonders at Roxborough Provide Students with a Unique Winter Field Day. Written by AXL Academy CAP Instructor Harmony Esqueda. 7th grade Community Adventure Program (CAP) students from Aurora Expeditionary Learning Academy (AXL Academy) set off for an exciting field trip to Roxborough State Park. The park contains stunning red rock formations that… Read more »
Colorado Wildfire Project During this program, we will camp on-site and take a deep dive into learning about wildfires in Colorado. The curriculum explores how wildfires impact soil and land health, and investigates fire ecology and erosion. Students will check out new and old wildfire burn areas, and complete wildfire mitigation Action Projects to help… Read more »
Multi-day outdoor skills programs for middle and high schools. Cottonwood Institute collaborates with schools and youth organizations along the Colorado Front Range—primarily for middle and high school students—to provide high quality, high impact environmental education and service-learning programs. We run multi-day outdoor skills programs close to home in the Front Range or at one of… Read more »
AXL Academy students came back from their day off to go play in the sun and snow at Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Written by Carly Winner. Check out photos here! Escrito en español más abajo After snowing over ten inches in the beginning of the week, AXL Academy students came back from their day… Read more »
Angevine Middle School students came out of their shells and bonded on their winter field day. Escrito en español más abajo Written by Field Instructor Barbara Ramsdell. See photos here! Eleven students from Angevine Middle School’s CAP class set out on Friday, January 28th for their first winter field day at Caribou Ranch Open Space…. Read more »
The Changemakers winter field day featured a skeletal surprise, quinzhee, avalanche training, and plenty of falls in the snow! Written by Chelsea Tossing. Check out more photos here. Escrito en español más abajo If you’ve ever been to Brainard Lake in the winter, you know how absolutely beautiful it is; endless miles of trails take… Read more »
Written by Chelsea Tossing (Escrito en español más abajo) When we first began the Changemakers program in the summer of 2020, the world felt as if it had been turned upside down. Students had been out of school for months, and the lockdowns that extended into summer proved even more isolating. As we began thinking… Read more »
2020 has been a lot of things, and while “inspiring” may not be the first word that comes to mind, there were in fact many things to be inspired by in the world of Cottonwood Institute! Our instructors stepped up to the challenge of adapting their programs in a big way, and our students were… Read more »
We asked the students of the Centaurus CAP Outdoor Class a classic icebreaker question when we circled up at 8am in the school parking lot before our winter field dau to Caribou Ranch Open Space near Nederland: What superpower do you want to have? Volar (flying) was a popular choice. Invisibility, mind control (mwahaha) and… Read more »
