Zoo, indoor exhibits: Sketch, Write, Wonder

Name: Zoo, indoor exhibits: Sketch, Write, Wonder
Start: 2025-04-19T13:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-19T16:00:00-05:00
Location: Henry Vilas Zoo

Schedule

Sat Apr 19 2025 at 01:00 pm to 04:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Henry Vilas Zoo | Madison, WI

Come nature journal about animals at the zoo! April is a hard month to schedule nature events—will it be warm outside or freezing? The zoo has us covered—their indoor exhibits are fantastic and sometimes overshadowed by the more obvious outdoor animals. If you’ve never spent time in the reptiles/amphibian house or the tropical bird house you’re in for a fantastic treat. Birds fly and walk around freely inside the aviary, and it also houses giant fish, tiny monkeys, and bats. The herpetarium houses some of my favorite zoo animals such as the poisonous dart frogs, geckos, and snakes.
I’ll give some tips on sketching moving animals, and ways to capture their behaviors through writing, counting, and sketching maps and diagrams.
DETAILS:
- MEETING SPOT: Meet inside the entrance to the tropical rainforest aviary (the building next to the capybaras)
- PARKING: do NOT park in the Vilas Park lot off of Randall as it is 2-hour parking and you may be ticket. Park in the lot across from the beach on Vilas Park Dr.
- SEATING: there are no indoor benches in the herpetarium, maybe some in the aviary (can’t recall), and plenty in the primate house against the back walls. You may want to bring a sketching stool.
- WHO SHOULD COME? All ages, all skill levels. Nature journaling is perfect for beginners. This is not a class, but I will be giving tips and an overview of nature journaling.
- BUILDINGS ARE: wheelchair accessible

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WHAT IS NATURE JOURNALING?
Nature journaling is more than drawing or painting pictures--we also write questions and notes in our sketchbooks to wonder more deeply about nature. We’ll talk briefly about ideas of what to write, such as the writing prompts "I notice... I wonder... It reminds me of..." You'll also get some nature journaling tips about ways you could document things that you may see at the event location.