Hi Friends!
This week we headed out to Loree Forest with our Collingwood Forest school crew. This popular hiking spot connects onto the Bruce Trail, which is 840km long! Our goal was to hunt down some great animal tracks, and decipher what we found. Loree forest is tucked away within the beautiful Niagara Escarpment, which is protected by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). We are lucky to have access to all these amazing trails here in The Town of Blue Mountains, they allow us to always be able to have an adventure, without even leaving our backyard! Check out how our awesome Forest School kids spent their day!
The brisk air didn’t stop us from exploring the great outdoors.
Our active play is a great way to burn off our energy from all the excitement forest school brings. Within our morning walk, we found a wolf and a german shepherd protecting their baby “Mine craft wolf.”
We took some time to discuss different types of prints we might see on our hike, while knowing the difference between a “canine” and an “feline” footprint. Some of the animals we focused on were: Coyote, Dog, Fox, Cougar, Black Bear, Deer, Turkey and Rabbit.
A huge thank you to Adam and Alice for bringing in some amazing animal findings. Adam was lucky to find a FULL shed skin from a milk snake, while Alice found a piece of fox jaw, and two back bones from an unknown bird.
These two pictures show a glimpse of the animal tracks we found on our hike. There must have been a party we were not invited to, because there was an abundance of deer and turkey footprints.
Warming up by the fire is a staple activity for us at Forest School, and it just never feels right without roasting some marshmallows. Our kids are getting really good at starting their own fires, and being able to use a “strike-anywhere-match”. We spent some time telling each other interesting facts about animals. Some examples were “Elephants are pregnant for an estimated 2 years”, “Beavers slap their tails on the water to scare predators”, “Wolfs can birth a litter of 9”, and yes “Bears do poop in the woods”.
Our last activity of the day was to create some music, and magic with our own music sticks!! We made them with yarn, bells and sticks we found. The bells brought a little Christmas spirit to our day, and was a fabulous end to a jam packed, fun filled day!
Great job to everyone who found an animal track, it was tricky but everyone pulled it off and found something amazing! This meant we handed out our FIRST Animal Tracking bead, with a total of 6 tracking beads.
Reminder – We are expecting lots of snow this week so extra gloves, scarves or neck buffs are a great idea to keep extra warm…maybe winter has decided to stay!
Next Week – We will be focusing on another new bead, the cooking bead. Our class took a poll and will be making cookies and home made bread, so yummy! Hopeful there will be some leftovers, but we can’t make any promises.
Thanks for reading this week, talk to you next week!
Krista
