Hello folks one last time!
The last two days of forest school have come and our 2017 fall semester is now over.
With mixed feelings we looked back on our past months and said goodbye to new friends, adventures, exploration, discoveries and new (nature) knowledge! But no reason to be sad … Forest School will continue in the Winter in Collingwood and will return to Thornbury in the spring! And instead of being sad about the fact that the fall semester is over, we focused on the fact that it took place and cherish all the new memories that were created!
Mother nature has loaded us with tons of snow this December and we took plenty of time to get creative in the white fluff! Building shelters, playing games, discovering snowflakes … there’s really no limits in how to use snow!
Now that all the leaves have fallen off the trees we discovered a HUGE wasps nest. Before taking it down we researched and made sure that wasps don’t reuse their nest in the spring. We climbed up the tree to get a hold of the huge nest. It wasn’t that easy. We were all astonished of how well the nest was attached to a few branches. With enough force and impact, we successfully knocked the nest down and began opening it up. We found 6 layers of combs and also plenty of unhatched eggs. Ryder was really interested in this and took the time to try and carefully open up as many eggs as possible. There he discovered that the unhatched wasps where not all the same age. Some still a larva, some almost a full-grown adult. One thing all the unhatched eggs had in common: they were all located on the outside of the big comb layer. It seem that this is where the survival rate is the lowest. Ryder made the assumption that it most likely had something to do with the temperature.
In between enjoying the fresh snow, exploratory free play and saying good-bye to an awesome forest school season, we also found time to finish some unfinished projects like the bat-shelters and uncompleted worksheets.
Together we all cleaned up our forest-school classroom making sure everyone took their medallions with their hard earned beads and sticker sheets home.
And to end the last forest school day: a great big cinnamon role hug!!!!
I’d like to thank all the parents for bringing these fantastic nature nuts to the Thornbury Forest School. But most of all I’d like to thank each and every student for being so awesome and accomplishing so many great things this semester!
Thank you Aja, Ryder, Taven, Alice and Izzy for being you and contributing to the Forest School in your unique way! See you again soon!
Merry Christmas & a very happy to year!
Tamara
