A place of curiosity and education, with opportunities for showcasing the artistry and ingenuity of students, the Woodland Park library thrives on enthusiasm for learning.

Last week told the story. First off, students were eager to learn about dinosaurs and the fact that the opportunity to view a world-class collection of fossils is across the street from the library.

Paleontologist Mike Triebold and his wife, J.J. Triebold, opened the resource center in 2004.

 “We are the largest commercial paleontology laboratory in the country and the third largest in the world,” said Eric Goderis, education director for the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park.

Sure, dinosaurs might be ancient and all that, but at the resource center, prehistoric animals, replicas, that is, come up against 21^st century technology.

With 3D printers at the dinosaur center, scientists print models of fossils they find in places such as South and North Dakota, Kansas and Montana.

To bring the present into the past, Goderis made 3D prints of a claw of a Struthiomimus, an ostrich-like dinosaur, the most recent discovery by the center’s paleontologists.

COLUMBINE SIXTH GRADERS  

In honor of Colorado’s sesquicentennial, sixth-grade students at Columbine Elementary School recreated what Woodland Park might have looked like 150 years ago. To construct the historical buildings, the students used Legos for the train station, general store, post office, mining camp and stagecoaches.

Continuing the theme, the students, part of Michelle Studwell’s accelerated math class, put together the flag of Colorado, copying the exact proportions of the flag’s 2:3 ratio. As a result, the flag is 9 feet tall and 13 ½ feet wide.

Sixth-graders Hayli Schultz and Chase Husby explained what the colors mean. The white is for snowcapped peaks; the blue is for the skies. The blue and white together pay tribute to the state flower, the columbine.

The red “C” signifies the state’s centennial in 1876 as well as the red soil of Colorado; while the yellow is for the sunshine and the gold discovered back then.

To recreate a legend in Colorado, the students crafted a replica of Bigfoot.

For another display, the students used Rubik’s Cubes as building materials for a mosaic of historical characters and structures.

The Columbine staff involved in the project, in addition to Studwell, are Wanda Gordon; Ashli Schultz, Columbine librarian; and Emily Gabaldon. Studwell teaches the school’s STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) gifted and talented program.