Eiber Families Fill SOLE’s Family Nature Night
A steady stream of families meandered through Eiber’s doors as Family Nature Night began on a beautiful April evening. Smiling faces were waiting at the Welcome Table greeting everyone with raffle tickets and information! Partners lined the hallways with activities aplenty, and pizza was waiting in the cafeteria with an added bonus of making s’mores in the hallway for dessert courtesy of Mountain Side Gear Rental. While munching on delicious chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker combinations, many adults and kids learned about all the gear available for rent that makes some outdoor activities more fun for minimal cost.
Sprinkled throughout the event were six police cadet volunteers helping kids get in touch with nature. Not only was it fun for the kids, but the cadets had an amazing time, too! Maybe some of them will volunteer at next year’s event as well!
Or maybe you were busy trying to identify bird eggs and skulls with Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. Many were fascinated by the different features of various bird species. Could you tell which one was an eagle? The trivia and biofacts provided by US Fish and Wildlife Rocky Mountain Arsenal were a hit with many kids, and it was a particularly fun station for people to stop because you could also dress up as a Black-footed ferret!
Backyard Bass, located outside, gathered quite a following of students, some of whom could not even pull themselves away at the end of the night! How many plastic fish did you catch? A&H Adventures ran archery in the gym, and it was also extremely popular with kids willing to wait in the ever-present line for a shot (or two, or three!) at hitting a bullseye. For those too young for archery, there was still plenty of room for an impromptu game of tag well out of harm’s way.
The raffle at 6 pm was highly anticipated and fully attended. Students gripped their tickets hoping to hear the winning number. Binoculars and camping gear went quickly, and lucky families also received History Colorado Family Passes. The grand prize State Parks Gift Certificate was received by by two brothers and their family eager to explore the parks in this beautiful state!
History Colorado had some rousing games of history bingo going on, and many kids found it fun to pose with state symbols for a photo opportunity afterwards. Butterfly Pavilion’s hissing cockroaches were intriguing, if a little scary to look at. Some brave souls did reach in and touch them, though! Were you brave enough?
The trivia wheel and Generation Wild activities got a lot of attention as kids tried to jump as far as they could or guess the answer to a particularly hard trivia question. How many things could you check off the list of 100 things to do before you’re 12? Tracking animals using their unique paws as clues was a good way to start!
Lookout Mountain Nature Center had some very fun activities for those willing to act a little silly. Did you try animal track Twister!? Plaster track molds were also a hit after taking a turn at matching animal pictures to tracks. Stopping at the eye-catching map at the USFS table drew you in for interesting investigations and trivia as well.
With so many partners, it was a full evening of fun things to do. It was a wonderful night full of fun for all the families, and kids leaving at the end of the evening had a huge assortment of favorite activities to list. The SOLE program would like to thank all of our partners, volunteers, police cadets, Eiber staff, and everyone who attended that made the night a success!
