Great Smoky Mountains National Park is pleased to offer its spring Parks as Classrooms (PaC) program, March – May, for kindergarten-8th grade students from Tennessee schools. The PaC program provides an opportunity for students to participate in an outdoor education program that integrates the natural and cultural resources of Great Smoky Mountains National Park with Tennessee curriculum objectives.
Resource Education Park Rangers are the subject experts and primary instructors during on-site field trips to the Park, with assistance from the classroom teachers. Lesson plans help the students learn all the educational disciplines, including science, language arts, social studies, music, arts, and mathematics. During activities, the Park becomes an outdoor classroom with hands-on learning experiences at several Park locations. The following are the programs available at this time:

Coopers Branch Classroom (Cades Cove) (1st grade)
Has students become nature detectives by participating in a discovery hike to learn about habitats and a show and tell activity to learn about the six different animal groups and their characteristics.

Porters Flat Classroom (Greenbrier) and Cove Homeplace Classroom (Cades Cove) (2nd grade)
Takes children back into time to discover how early settlers used the forest for obtaining food and medicines and to recreate the experience of building a log home using real tools.

Habitat Diversity Classroom
(3rd grade)
Students will be given clues to discover how specific animals are interdependent in a forest or stream habitat, and build their own habitat using a “diversity” of species. This program is offered at Metcalf Bottoms and Cosby. Class size is limited to 40 students.

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