We were thrilled to be able to bring CaveSim to this wonderful event for the fourth consecutive year. We had great weather and very strong turnout. Our visitors were grateful for our new air conditioning!
CaveSim founder Dave Jackson (left) belays a participant as she hoists herself up the vertical caving tower. Photo by David Coleman.
We love bringing our programs to this special retreat for very gifted kids and their families. This was our fourth consecutive year with PGR, and we had a wonderful time facilitating our STEM labs, including our cave biology lab (with real live cultures), our waterproof flashlight lab, our epidemiology lab, and physics on the 12′ vertical caving tower. We also had the opportunity to demonstrate conservation of mass using our carbide demo.
What a cool place to set up CaveSim, overlooking the beautiful Pactola Lake near Custer. Photo by Andrea Fountain, Black Hills Parks & Forests Association.
Dave helps two participants learn about vertical caving using the Frog System on the CaveSim vertical caving tower. Photo by Andrea Fountain, Black Hills Parks & Forests Association.
This was our second visit to Peoria Elementary, and we love working with these bright and respectful students.
Learning geology from CaveSim staff member Jackson Fulcher.
The kids participating in this program just couldn’t get enough, and the teachers had to plead with them to go home at the end of the day!
It was such an honor for CaveSim founder Dave Jackson to have his high school science teacher visit to see what CaveSim is all about. Dr. John Moyle is an amazing educator, conservationist, and wonderful human being.
It was also a great honor for us to receive the NSS Group Award for Conservation, announced and presented by Val Hildreth-Werker.
We were so glad to be invited back to Fernbank for our second program.
Getting set up for a busy day.
We were so glad to be able to celebrate National Cave & Karst Day at this wonderful show cave. We had very challenging weather (gobs of rain), but we kept CaveSim open the whole time.
What a wonderful place! We hope to make it back to this great museum again soon.
We were so impressed by the students who remembered what we taught them at another COMPASS program more than a year ago. One student had basically all of the answers!
This was our sixth consecutive year bringing CaveSim to this wonderful school. The weather was so severe that the fire department packed up their demonstration and went home, but we stayed. The kids are hearty and didn’t mind the freezing fog.
Above, the students were all smiles after exploring CaveSim. It was the last day of school, but we snuck in plenty of learning! Below, students exploring the mobile cave. Photos by Dave Jackson.
Above, students learn first-hand about pulleys and mechanical advantage on the 12′ CaveSim A-frame. Below, kids learn some basic circuits concepts while having fun with the cave rescue telephones. Photos by Dave Jackson.
We had a wonderful Family Nature Night at this beautiful rural school, thanks to the support of The Colorado Department of Wildlife and their SOLE program. We worked with lots of kids and their families at this K-8 school, and the program ran from 5PM-7PM, which fit in perfectly with our program in Cripple Creek in the morning (see next post).
Adults have fun with CaveSim too!
Excited to try the CaveSim tower.
Practice cave rescue with our Skedco stretcher.
We were so honored to be invited to bring CaveSim to the 20th anniversary of Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. CaveSim was so popular that we kept it open for an extra 90 minutes, and didn’t close until 8:30PM!
This was our second year doing a four-day program at this wonderful charter school, and we worked with kindergarten through fifth grade. Most of the students had seen CaveSim last year, but they loved getting to explore the cave again, and they all learned something new from all of the different activities that we brought.
We’ve been working with this great private school for eight years, and it was really fun to teach a great group of middle school students this year. We did our advanced program, in which we taught vertical cave rescue on the 12′ tower, as well has horizontal cave rescue using a stretcher and an obstacle course.
This afterschool enrichment program has been a big hit with the 19 students who are participating. The kids are in 2nd – 5th grade, and have been enjoying our hands-on STEM labs, as well as our regular program. A big thank-you to CaveSim staff member Jackson Fulcher and CaveSim volunteers Christine, Todd, Nicole, and Christa for helping make this program a big success.
A huge thank-you to our wonderful friend and teacher Richelle Gittens for making this program possible, and to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for providing much of the funding.
CaveSim designs, builds, and uses interactive caves to teach kids about conservation and science. We believe that kids who know better become adults who do better.