Wilderness Wildlife Week

May 7, 2019-May 11, 2019

Wilderness Wildlife Week is the Spring highlight of our homeschool year! Wilderness Wildlife Week begins this Tuesday!

This FREE EVENT takes place in Pigeon Forge, at the Leconte Center.

You can read more about Wilderness Wildlife Week here on the official website. You can also download the schedule at this website.

Wood carving at Wilderness Wildlife Week — Wood carving at WWW

Why should I interrupt my homeschool schedule to attend Wilderness Wildlife Week?

Good question!

Let me share just a few reasons why we love Wilderness Wildlife Week at our house!

1. Hands-On Learning.

If you know anything about our homeschool of boys, you know that we highly prize hands-on learning. Hands-on=highly remembered.
Here’s some other hands-on learning we’ve recently enjoyed.
At WWW we get to sink our hands into the dirt, paint, and wool, or we get to try our hands at strumming the dulcimer, shooting an arrow, petting a snake (!) or carving a chunk of wood. These are all skills we have tried from the past few years. But, wait, there’s more!

Carving class

2. Inter-Generational Learning. This is probably one of my favorite aspects of WWW. You have a lot of older folks who know wonderful skills, and who are happy to share with the younger generations! Some of our favorites are the gentleman who loves to talk about his love of Nature, the Appalachian musicians, the basket weavers, wool spinners, and the wood carving expert. One year, a dear older lady personally took our boys aside to show them the skill of old-timey rope tricks. I firmly believe that she enjoyed teaching them even more than they enjoyed learning, which they did. But you could see how moving the rope in certain ways to make interesting patterns seemed to take her back to her own girlhood days. Young people absolutely need to interact with older people! There more than skills to learn! There is simply no substitute for lessons of life gleaned from years of experience.

String art

3. Lost and Dying Arts. Here again, we have skills that the young iPhone generation have no clue about.

How to turn out a wooden bowl
How to carve an intricate figurine
How to paint a bear in the woods
How to spin wool
Basket weaving
Needlepoint
Bird identification
Photography.

4. Appalachian History We have learned some interesting stories coming out of our region, and have picked up some wacky facts from the folks who lived here before us!

5. Nature Nuggets

Forest rangers
Flower experts
Mater gardeners
Beekeepers
Soil experts
Snake lovers
Wolf experts
Native Plant biologists
Butterfly ladies
Bird watchers
And many more!
I love to sit in classes and lectures just soaking up the knowledge about my favorite–Native plants and wildflowers! Last year I purchased a Spice Bush Tree, which made me very happy!

6. Ride the Tram Go ahead–have your chuckle! But our boys, even though they’re way too old for this, just live to sit on the Tram and ride around for awhile. I must admit that I also enjoy the feel of wind whipping through my hair as we ride along. We make sure we take a few minutes at the end of our time at WWW to just ride the loop.

7. Something for Everyone. OK, I have not begun to list all of the interesting things to learn at Wilderness a Wildlife Week, by I’ve named a few. I haven’t even mentioned the hikes, excursions, and and exhibitors! You can find something at Wilderness Wildlife Week if you’re old (most of the people are retirees) or young!

I’ve noticed that over the last few years that we’ve been going, that each year we see more and more homeschoolers! And why not? It’s FREE, it’s fun, and you get to meet interesting people!

If you’re in the Pigeon Forge, TN area this next week, stop on in and check it out! You can come for all day, part of a day, or just for a few lectures!

I am not getting paid to write this, and receive no compensation whatsoever for promoting this event. I just like to spread the word, because we think Wilderness Wildlife Week is a lot of fun!