School Programs
This is a great way to add another dimension to your curriculum. Even though most of Seekers Wild programs are outdoors, we can design indoor or outdoor programs that are a perfect supplement for subjects such as science, social studies, fine arts, as well as health education, and physical education. Below are some examples of Why and How Seekers Wild Custom Programs can benefit your classroom. The why is where our philosophies may intersect and the how is a quick view of what a Seekers Wild program might look like in your class. There are sample program schedules available here.
Why and how we can fit into specific curriculum:
Why we work with Science: 
What we learn in science classes throughout our school age years is a critical basis for understanding the natural world around us. Seekers Wild strongly believes in a similar process used in scientific experimentation. Observing our surroundings, documenting what we see, analyzing it, gaining conclusions, and evaluating. 

Wilderness living skills such as tracking, understanding animal behavior, and learning weather patterns, among others, almost identically mimic this process. 

Also, understanding natural cycles such as the water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, etc. can affect ones ability to survive in a wilderness survival situation. Therefore gaining knowledge of them before you find yourself in an emergency situation can greatly increase your chance of survival. These are just a few examples of the connection between science curriculum and what Seekers Wild teaches in our camps and classes. 
How this translates to your class and what it could look like:
  • Survival skills lectures that focus on using scientific process, critical thinking, and how natural cycles effect survival in the wilderness.
  • Hands-on demonstrations in building fire by friction, how a bow and arrow work, 
  • Edible and medicinal plant talks or walks around the school. May include harvest and taste testing.

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Why we work with Social Studies: 
This is such a dense and expansive subject. From geography to one's own self development to studying civilizations past and present. Seekers Wild doesn't just teach wilderness survival skills, we incorporate the entire scope of our existence. Self-awareness, traditional living skills, mapping, navigation, and laws of nature (carrying capacity, thermodynamics etc..) are a few of the things dear to our heart. 

How this translates to your class and what it could look like:
  • Wildcrafting in the way traditional peoples of our area did hundreds of years ago. This could be baskets, cordage, mats, etc.
  • Mapping of the area (school grounds, or other location: home, known location of student) and incorporating elements into the map.This may include flora and fauna, resources, areas that resemble native landscape.
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Why we work with Fine Arts:
Just like a person who doesn't fit particularly into any one group or click, Fine Arts is often forgotten or seen as a marginally necessary part of our culture. Seekers Wild however believes that the Arts is the glue and enhancement that not only holds our society and personal lives together but improves them on multiple levels. Relating arts to survival skills and primitive living skills makes sense to us. 

At Seekers Wild we seek to instill a notion of making everything we do an art by:
  • Paying extreme attention. To your surroundings, to detail, to yourself, and to others. 
  • Your craft is your art. If we are doing fire by friction, it is not strength and stamina that makes the bowdrill work. It is your form and ability to listen to the song of the wood and needs of the fire. 
  • Changing the way we move our bodies. Moving silently and invisibly requires not only physical practice but mental as well. When put together, a stealthy walk becomes a dance and our partner is the natural world around us. We interact with the flora: leaves, sticks, and rocks on the ground, the bushes, and tree limbs above the ground and the fauna: the birds, deer, squirrels, etc. 

How this translates to your class and what it could look like:
  • A short talk about different gates of animals and then practice mimicking them.
  • Conversation about how to move stealthily and then practice doing so. 
  • Fire by friction/bowdrill demonstration and then hands-on practice.

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Why we work with Health Education: 
Seeking health and wellness is deeply woven into the mission of Seekers Wild. We believe that incorporating nature into our lives improves the overall quality of life for individuals and the community. To many this is no surprise. But the population that are unaware of or even doubt the concept of nature as an integral part of our health is growing. Partly caused by technology and by the migration of rural populations to urban settings, the deficit of exposure to the natural world around is what Seekers Wild looks to alleviate and maybe even reverse.

Living lives closer to nature and practicing survival skills and primitive living skills increases our health and wellness many ways. Some believe that we are "hard wired" to desire to be in nature. This is described in the Biophilia hypothesis by E.O. Wilson, a highly renowned biologist and naturalist. Many other works have compiled research data and tons of anecdotal evidence suggesting that exposure to nature is critical in managing mood and self-development. Richard Louv's book "Last Child In The Woods" covers this topic well and his website offers so much more information on the subject. 
http://richardlouv.com/news/
Beyond this, the primitive living and survival skills build up one's self sufficiency. Being able to care for and provide for one's self opens almost establishes courage. 

How this translates to your class:
  • Wild edible and medicinal plants walks around your school or local park. 
  • Lecture, examples, and practice of how to get outside including but not limited to: talks on sit spots, how to ethically attract and observe wildlife, activities and games that promote understanding the natural world. 

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Why we work with Physical Education: 
Many of the games and sports we play today were created b people who inhabited this very land hundreds of years ago. These games were created to either mimic a skill necessary for survival or out of the desire to entertain themselves. Seekers Wild also designs many of it's programs around these same philosophies. If we are not directly practicing a primitive living or survival skill we are probably playing a game that is a metaphor for something in the natural environment. We also love to create games from only materials we find in nature. This promotes creativity, teamwork, and shows us that we don't need batteries, the internet, or an plug-in to have fun.  

How this translates to your class:

  • Stalking, animal mimicry games, and other survival skill games. 
  • Practicing actual survival or primitive living skills that can require physical exertion such as bowdrill/fir by fritcion.
  • Creating and playing games from found materials. Some of our favorites are rock game, Kub, river rock bocce ball, throwing stick bird and rabbit "hunt".

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Click a subject to skip ahead to it.
Science
Social Studies
Fine Arts
Health Education
Physical Education
Example Program Schedules here: