Programs

Extend your Preschool or PlaySchool day at Lunch Bunch. Bring your lunch then enjoy free play indoors and outdoors after your meal. Children are escorted to and from lunch and the Nature Preschool, Nature PlaySchoo, Maine Park Preschool, and Wildwood Early Childhood programs by staff. No class on days that Preschool or Playschool are not in session.

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Wildwood's nature focused program for children ages 3-4 infuses traditional readiness learning and preschool activities with an emphasis on the natural world and daily outdoor discovery. The curriculum incorporates the Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards. In addition to their ABC’s and 123’s, preschoolers hike the trails around the pond, prairie, and woodland, draw in their journals, turn over logs to look for insects and worms, and get to know the animals at Wildwood all while developing lifelong learning skills in the classroom and outside. Nature Preschool rotates curriculum, exploring different seasonal topics. This allows your child to attend a unique program for two years. All children must be completely toilet trained to participate. Age is 3-4 years old as of September 1. Registration for the program is online. If you have never registered for a Park District program, you will need to set up your Household account with the Park Ridge Park District to create an account.

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Interested in being a ranger at Wildwood? Get a hands-on taste of what it’s like to be a Wildwood ranger. Learn how to clean, feed, and care for the animals during this fun training session.

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Calling together the Adventure Club – come join Wildwood’s naturalists for weekly outdoor excursions. Explore the prairie looking for creatures big and small, grab a net to find bugs in the long grass or in the water, hike the Des Plaines River trail, and discover nature through experiments, projects, and exploration. The majority of the class takes place outdoors.

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See what creatures roamed the supercontinent Pangea as we explore the Triassic period. Look into the seas to see the giants of the oceans, those swimming reptile cousins of the dinosaurs. Discover the small but mighty dinosaurs who paved the way for their giant descendants as we explore the birth of the reptiles known as dinosaurs! Then on to the Jurassic, to study the towering sauropods and creatures thought to be the ancestor of the modern bird, Archeopteryx, and see how feathers started to evolve. Become a Paleontologist to uncover the imprints of features and scales left behind in our replica fossils. Then it's the Cretaceous: the end of the world as the dinosaurs know it. Discover the famous dino cousins, T. rex and Velociraptor and create a dino dig to keep. Explore the possibilities that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, and simulate their demise with earthquakes, volcanoes and asteroids.

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