Gobble! Gobble! “I saw a turkey!” That was all it took. If there were any reservations about hiking earlier in the day, those dissipated as soon as the girls eyed the turkey off in the distance. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it was only fitting to find wild turkeys on our first outing with… Read more »
Picture this: The peaceful silence of snow-capped mountains towering above a vast blanket of white…WHOOOSH! The silence changes quickly into peals of laughter as 11 pairs of boot-donned feet trample quickly out of range of the next onslaught of snowballs. For Cottonwood Institute, an early snowfall doesn’t hinder survival courses; in fact, they just become… Read more »
With wind chills predicted at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, the brave students from this quarter’s Community Adventure Program (CAP) at New Vista High School headed to the mountains near Allenspark, CO to take part in their first overnight of the class! Several students had never camped before and many had never been winter camping. With a week… Read more »
From the wilds of the city to the wilds of the Colorado mountains, students from West Denver Prep’s Lake Campus embarked on a journey to learn how to survive amidst the chill of a fall weekend. Cottonwood Institute teamed up with West Denver Prep’s enrichment program to give kids the opportunity to connect to the… Read more »
On Friday October 7th, the members of Earth Task Force (ETF) headed up into the mountains for a fall retreat at The Highlands Camp and Retreat Center in Allenspark, Colorado. The trip was planned and facilitated by students and ETF mentors with borrowed gear and organizational help from The Cottonwood Institute to help them pursue… Read more »
UPDATE – Breaking News – The Earth Task Force has WON the 2011 Center for Resource Conservation’s Youth Conservation ReWard! Congratulations goes out to ETF on a ReWard well deserved! Keep up the strong work! ### Congratulations! The Earth Task Force’s Board of Super Heroes (BOSH) was chosen as a finalist for the Center for… Read more »
Community Adventure Program (CAP) students at New Vista High School were deeply impacted by their outdoor experiences this quarter. In CAP class, one of our goals is always to awaken students to their gifts and abilities to make change in their own lives and the lives of people in their communities. The reflections of this… Read more »
Here at Cottonwood Institute, we are all about teamwork. On a pleasantly warm fall evening in October at Cherry Creek Reservoir, Clark Patton from CI teamed up with a group of campers from Buckley Air Force Base’s Youth Programs for a couple of hours of fun and fire skills. As a guest instructor with a… Read more »
The 30th Community Adventure Program (CAP) started off the 2011-2012 school year with an energetic bang! Students took an early interest in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and that shaped the class as they delved into research and public action! The pertinence of the topic of GMOs was amazing. The first week of class three students… Read more »
They said we were too small. They said our network wasn’t big enough. They said don’t even bother applying. They said we didn’t have a chance. And yet we did it! We just received the official announcement that the Cottonwood Institute won the 2011 Markham Mark of Distinction Award and $25,000 to support our programs… Read more »
