Teachers learn fun science activities at Mammoth Cave overnight workshop

MAMMOTH CAVE, Ky.- Teachers from around Kentucky are at Mammoth Cave to learn about hands-on science activity.

“When we can go and we can make ourselves excited then we can take that to our kids and hopefully make them as excited as well,” said South Christian Elementary teacher Ashlee Campbell. 

Ten teachers stayed overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday to learn fun ways to teach, utilizing the features of Mammoth Cave.

Some of the activities include going on cave tours, sampling from the ponds and learning how to identify rocks.

One of the teacher’s favorite activities of the day was “building a beaver.”

“Those for kids are things that they really get interested in, they make those memories so it’s something we’re big on is those kids being able to say remember when we built a beaver, remember when we did that with the rocks and the acid to see that chemical reaction,” said Campbell. 

Over 200 teachers were on the waitlist for the workshops. Ten teachers attend each workshop at a time to abide by social distancing rules.

The park hopes this helps the teachers create more fun in their classrooms.

“I’m hoping that they’ll go back to their schools and share these activities and that all of our local students will understand the importance of this beautiful amazing place,” said Mammoth Cave Environmental Education Coordinator Jennifer Shackelford.

The teachers can’t wait to return to their classrooms and implement what they learned.

“I think when you have activities that incorporate multiple ways of learning then they’re gonna take away a lot more from that and learn a lot more from that,” said Webster County Middle School teacher Kathleen Taft. 

The program was made possible because the friends of Mammoth Cave gave a grant that was funded by State Farm.