Today was packed full of exploration, curiosity and new skills! With our focus on wilderness survival we decided to gear our day towards learning about our furry little friends and how they survive our harsh, Canadian winters. Our students decided to start their day by working towards a new bead – “starting a fire without a match”. What a great way to start our day. Thank you Lara for bringing in your show and tell item which also acted as a tool for our fire. This hand held flint and steel was a challenge for some but after lots of persistence and determination we were able to start our fire.
“This is the best fire I have ever seen” -Izzy
After reading the book “Over and Under the Snow” by Kate Messner our students had the opportunity to visit the back bush and search for evidence of our little friends living under the snow. We found animal prints, animal holes, tunnels and fur under the snow. We also had a lot of fun “skating” and dancing on the ice that was left over from the storm earlier this week. This activity touched on three elements for animal survival – Hibernation, Migration and Keeping Active!
Hibernation (also keeping warm) is a huge part of survival; it is also something we strive for every day at Forest School. One of our goals of the day was to get the kids to brainstorm and idea. How would they would keep a jar of water warm and from losing heat in the cold? The challenge was accepted by all! We spent some time pretending our jars were animals and the outer layers (rubber pads, cloth, bubble wrap) were the fur and fat. We buried our jars in snow and will check on them next week just like the wild we believe that some will survive and others will not.
We took a moment out of our day to act like birds for the “Amazing Bird Wilderness Survival Game”. We paired up and each team received a “Bird information card” which included information about their diet and habitat. Their goal was to migrate through this large scale board game while coming across man-made and natural obstacles such as high winds, oil spill, clean windows, BB guns and other predators. We started with 12 birds and only 6 survived.
With all of this talk about animal survival, we then spent some time discussing how we would survive in the winter. We started our first survival kit that we will continue to add to over this semester. We continued to improve on our shelter building skills and some of our students tried their hands at a new skill – the bow and drill. We learned it was harder than it looks and when it starts to smoke, it smells like marshmallows!
With all that was going on we still found time to learn yet another new skill from one of our students. Thank-you Dax for showing your fellow classmates how to make a “slip knot”, and all of our students were able to complete one knot after the demonstration. Congratulations for earning the Teaching bead!
What a day for stickers and beads! Our stickers included 10 Respect, 8 Wisdom and 1 Bravery, and our beads included 1 Teaching, 3 Fire, 10 Shelter and 1 show and tell. Congratulations to everyone!
Neal found a full fire extinguisher…or at least the kids thought it was full…it was empty, but the reactions were priceless!
We would like to welcome back all of our students to Free Spirit Forest School for the winter semester and we are happy to introduce one of our newest teachers; Neal!
This week was all about getting comfortable with outside travel. We took time to set our intentions for Forest School meaning, how we treat fellow classmates and things we want to let go of either personally or physically.
The lack of snow didn’t slow us down. We kept positive and made the best of our icy, winter wonderland! We are looking forward to the rest of our semester and all the adventure it will bring us through exploration and curiosity. The sky is the limit!
Forest School 2017 Class Photo
We welcome our new class of 2017! They are strong, hilarious, curious and a genuinely happy group of kids that we are excited to spend every Thursday with!
“The Earth Ship” is now our drop off and pick up location so we decided to start our day with a quick exploration around our new grounds. We found a wonderful moment when our students built their very first firepit. Many hands helped with this project and we couldn’t have had a better turn out! Through communication, working together and hard work our students built their first project together. Great job guys and gals!
One of our tasks of the day was to create our “Forest School Agreement” between students and teachers. It was wonderful to see all students participating in delivering what they want to get out of Forest School. We discussed respect (personal, other students boundries and our surroundings), listening (the difference between hearing and listening), communications and many many more. Check out what the kids came up with!
Our last adventure of the day was to gain the skills and knowledge to hunt down objects to create their own “emergency” snowshoes. We cut sticks, braided willow twigs, used ripped up t-shirts and twine. All of our students were able to create snowshoes that stayed afloat and held their body weight. We are super proud of all the hard work that went into their shoes and are excited to use them in further activities.
Dax showing off his “A” frame snowshoes
Congratulations to all our students who received their first of many respect stickers. Next week we are looking forward to giving away some beads! Keep up the good work everybody!
Next Week – Is all about wilderness survival! We will be looking at Food, Shelter and Fire…..we wonder what the kids think they will need to survive?
Our first semester of Forest School ended just the way it started, AMAZING. Our jam packed day consisted of our students using the skills, and knowledge they have obtained here at Forest School. “The Amazing Winter Race” started with us using a map to navigate ourselves to 7 different checkpoints, which consisted of various team-building activities, a crazy spider web, snow lava rock wall, and more mapping with our “Santa candy cane hunt”. We spent so much time today talking about our favourite memories, and what we are excitied about for the Spring.
This morning brought us back to Animal tracking week! Aaron had a keen eye with finding these bunny tracks right beside the Greenhouse.
Izzy was kind enough to bring in a very special rock to show the class before our amazing race. She called it a “Peacock Rock” This picture does not give the colour within the rock justice. Thank you Izzy for bringing in such a special rock to share with us.
We tested our memory with our Forest School matching game. Everything that we had talked about within class was brought up in this fun game. It was challenging for all of our students but everything was matched up by the end of it! Great job everyone you worked so hard!
Enjoying some active play over lunch, and letting our imaginations run wild! Did I mention we have some beautiful minds?
It’s a good thing we know how to read a map, or we would be walking in circles all day long! Our map took us all around our spacious Heathcote property and let us create new memories to treasure, it’s pretty amazing where a map can take you.
Our last task was to create another fire! One fire was started by Alice, Jack and Emily. Our kids have gained the skills and knowledge to seek, build and start their own fires without any help at all! I am so proud of everyone and all their hard work. Finding down sticks under the snow isn’t easy.
I cannot thank you enough (parents and kids) for the incredible 1st Forest School semester we just had, and jumping into this program with me! We have crushed our goals, gained knowledge, confidence and budding friendships through our laughter and tears. We are looking forward to the all the new ones we make this Spring!
Check out our bonus pictures below!
Have a healthy, happy holiday everyone! See you in the New Year!
With winter finally here we decided to stay close to home and focus our day on fire, shelter and cooking! The windy weather did not slow our students down..I think it gave them more energy! It was also great to see the kids imagination play unfold with each other, from turning the sleds into a train (stops and pick up included) to being reindeer, and gathering food. This bonding time is extremely important for our kids to connect with eatchother and create memories! To earn our cooking bead this week, we decided to challenge ourselves with bread, and a sweet treat with chocolate chip cookies!
Question of the day was: How burnt does the food have to be before you do not eat it?
As per usual our day started with our smudging ceremony, check-ins, and of course our amazing show and tell items that our students brought from home. A huge Thank-you to Alice for bringing in a seagull skull (it was incredibly clean as well), and Adam brought in a fully intact bees nest…no bees included.
We are so proud of Aaron for rocking his first fire today! Aaron used minimal amount of tinder and dead, dry and down sticks from our area. The fire kept us super warm all day! Thanks buddy!
We focused on a different type of shelter today, which was the “Quincy”. This common winter shelter is a snow mound that will be dug out to be able to fit one or two students at a time. We started in the green house with an in-class discussion about this type of shelter, and then took our learning outside to create this structure. We are hoping that the snow fall this week will add to our shelter and help make it bigger!
These awesome little people were working hard on earning their cooking bead today, and if you didn’t eat the burnt part of the bread, it was pretty amazing! Butter makes everything better…or so they say!
We took a break from our winter wonderland to create some Christmas ornaments from natural, and man made objects. Our students have amazing imaginations and at the end we came out with some awesome creations to take home.
Cookies…..need I say more?
High Fives all around for all our students who worked so hard today with Quincy building, fire starting, cooking and active group play! There was a lot of beads and stickers earned today: 3 cooking beads, 3 storytelling beads, 2 respect stickers and 1 honesty.
Next Week – We cant believe how fast the time has gone and how sad it will be to say “goodbye” next Wednesday at our final week of the fall semester! We will be putting our students to the test on our Winter wonderland “Amazing Race” challenges. Let the games begin!
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 kids waiting to go on our hike!
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!
The rain didn’t have us singing the blues today! Our busy little beavers were focused on tools, projects and problem solving. We were lucky to have one last week with warmer temperatures which gave us a lot of flexibility in our active play.
It’s been really incredible watching the growth and development in each child with their motor skills, confidence and teamwork…way to go everyone!
There was a ton of enthusiasm, laughter and fun this week! Here’s a “behind the scenes” look at all of our highlights and accomplishments of the day!
We started the day off by using our muscles and jumped into tearing down our shelters we made last week then built new ones. Last week fire was a big hit so our students wanted to take some time and work together and start a group fire. We learned very quickly that starting a fire is not as easy as it sounds. After all their hard work our fire was started and stayed hot until lunch time.
A big thanks to Emily for bringing in her rock/crystal collection. All the kids got to take a look at “golden tigers eye”, ” black lava stone”, “agate stone”, “rose quartz” and “fools gold”.
Everyone showed off their hammering skills with real hammers and nails! Every child went home with all ten fingers intact!
Later in the afternoon our students spent some time creating music with our homemade kazoos. Also, we apologize for the crazy weather today, we were on a roll with our creativity and made our very own rainmakers!
Our sit spots are a time where our students can reflect on their day and today was no exception. Our question of the day was – “Give 5 examples of how we treat people and how you want to be treated.” Some of the amazing answers were – “be kind, be respectful, help each other, love, like, hold someones hand, give people flowers when they are not happy, tell jokes and make someone smile.” Needless to say we have some seriously amazing little humans on our hands! Way to go parents for raising these sweet, genuine children that we get the pleasure of spending time with once a week.
We always save the best for last!! The main focus today was designing and building their very own bird houses! It was amazing to see how different all of our designs were.
Alice yelled from the Garden ” I heard a Wolf call!!” That’s all it took for our kids to run down to the Beaver River howling for coyotes with the hope of finding a wolf! Good news is no other animals called back!
To no surprise, there were lots of “Honesty” and “Respect” stickers earned today as well as:
1. Storytelling bead. Congratulations to everyone, you all worked so hard for them.
Next Week: We will be joining Collingwood Forest School for a BIG hike up to Loree Forest! Make sure to have an energizing breakfast to keep you fired up, and ready to explore!
We had another fun-filled Wednesday at Forest School! Our students spent a large portion of their day braving the cold, and gaining the skills to survive the outdoors. With the colder weather arriving, we focused on shelter building and becoming more confident with our fire skills. There was so much creative thinking, problem solving and collaboration today. We are so proud of all of our students for all their hard work!
Check out how incredible our students are!
Thanks Aaron for bringing in your personal sled today! So much fun was had running around the garden taking turns enjoying the ride and pulling each other around, it was definitely a hit!
Before our smudging ceremony our students had fun constructing their very own teeter totter. It took Jack, Aaron and Taven to lift me off the ground. What super strong young men we have at Forest School.
While we were out hiking and collecting our tinder and kindling, Alice came across some wonderful wild mint. All our kids got to try a piece, some of us even tested our breath to see if it smelled better.
“A Frame”, “Tee-pee”, “Tarps” and “Lean To” were some of the shelters we talked about today. Izzy and Emily worked together and built a “Tee-pee” shelter, while the other kids built “A frame” and “Lean To” shelters. Great teamwork today guys and gals!
We thought this week instead building fires with dry tinder (mostly due to the wet tinder in our area), we would change it up and create our first TNT fire starters. The students were given a toilet paper roll and the choice of birch bark, cotton balls, dried maple sap, newspaper or dryer lint. Packed all together this makes a great fire starter, and something that can be packed in a survival kit!
There was so much success with our fire skills this week, we are proud to say that all 7 of our students were able to start their own fires, and keep them going strong enough to roast marshmallows. High Fives all around!
A lot of beads and stickers were awarded today, wisdom and respect stickers were given out, while EVERYONE earned their shelter and fire beads. Congratulations to all our students.
Next Week:
Projects and Tools! Planning, construction and teamwork are just some of the skills to look forward to next week. Stay tuned.
Reminder:
You child can bring in one tool that could assist them within their projects.
“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to great places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose” – Dr. Suess
Our focus this week was mapping! Giving our students the ability to read and understand a map gives them opportunities for growth, confidence, amazing memories and fun! We kept our adventures close to the Thornbury area visiting the Craigleith Heritage Depot and an awesome hiking trail in Clarksburg.
Check out our day!
This morning we started the day off with show and tell. We had a range of special items from homemade natural art, home made medallion drawings, finger puppets, rocks and a Pokémon ball. There was no Pokémon in this ball.
Before we headed out on our adventure, we took time to discuss how to read a map. We looked at titles, legends, symbols, roads, trails, names and so much more.
Our first stop was the Craigleith Heritage Depot. Some of our students went right to the library to read “Charlottes Web” and “A funny thing happened on the way to school”. Some ventured to the museum and learned about Trilobites, the First Nations Petun tribe and the Train station. While others took some time to search for images of Wolves. If you have never been to this location before please take advantage of the incredible learning opportunities here. You won’t regret it! A big shout out to the Craigleith Depot for being such a great host!
On our second stop we found this amazing shelter! We took some time to play a game called “hunter and wolf”but by the end of the game it turned into “Cops and Robbers”. While we were exploring this new hiking trail we came across a rock mountain. We took time to search for fossils and found more great hiking sticks!
In the afternoon we started with a challenging scavenger hunt. Our students were given a map with check points to visit. At every check point there was a question about Forest school that they had to answer. Along with every question they gathered materials for their own personal fire. It was great to see teamwork arise and our older students even helped out our younger ones with sounding out words and making sure they all got the right answers! Great work guys and gals!
We finished our day with a riddle which led our students to a treasure! Make sure you asked your child how much treasure they found and what they got to keep!
Our riddle was:
“Into a fort you go where the treasure is aflow. Better hurry up and run because the treasure is a ton.”
We gave away 2 craft beads today and everyone is getting very close to getting a prize for their respect stickers. Great job everyone!
Next Week: Survival Week! We will focus on shelter, drinking, food, fire…it’s going be a busy day next week!
Can you believe it? 6 weeks left until we are done our first semester, how time flies! We couldn’t have asked for better weather today, and with the excitement of snow we decided to focus on Environmental Science.
Today brought a mix of physical exercise, visualization games, student creations and discussions. Throughout our day we discussed two types for pollution (natural and human), two types of energy (renewable and non-renewable), as well with how we as individuals can save the planet. We also started the David Suzuki Superhero challenge with one of the activities called the right to a healthy environment. If you would like more information about this challenge, check out their website at www.getbackoutside.ca
Check out how our day went below.
After our smudge ceremony we started the day with an “X and O” relay race. The teams were “The Dragons” on the left, and “The Hunters” on the right. After 5 races it was still a tie game…until later in the day when the dragons took the lead.
This morning Taven brought to school a box full of special things. This included a Peacock feather, an arrow head, a crystal, a shark tooth, a shotgun shell and a magnifying glass. The students loved it so much that next week we are going to have more show and tell!
After discussions about renewable energy sources, we took time to create our own windmills. They even worked in the wind!
The David Suzuki Superhero challenge was a great way to visualize and discuss the right to a healthy environment. Our students had to think of 5 things that can help protect our environment. We came up with great suggestions from don’t waste water, don’t litter, don’t cut down trees, ride a bike and eat all your food.
Free play is great for our students to burn off that energy, work on their social skills and have fun! We somehow ended up in rain barrels and took turns rolling each other around the garden. No one got sick.
Our afternoon was filled with fire skills, and creating our very first bio-dome! The kids had the choice of planting Kale or the flower Morning Glory. The great thing about this bio-dome? It waters itself and looks pretty cool!
Things you will need to build your own bio-dome:
2 recycled plastic bottles
1 string
Tape
Dirt
Water
Seeds
We took advantage of the sun and debriefed about our day, congrats to all our sticker earners (6 Wisdom, 6 Respect)!
Reminder: Due to the colder weather, please remember to bring extra clothes to layer up!
Next Week: Is all about Mapping and Travel. I wonder where that will take us…
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein
This week at Forest school, it was a student-led emergent day full of creativity. It was amazing to watch how the day unfolded through team-building activities that strived towards working together, communication and memory.
Our students worked both individually and together to construct a masterpiece of art from natural products as well as with man-made materials. Did I mention there was a lot of mud involved?
This was a great day for our kids to be as creative as they could!
Check it out!
The fog was amazing this morning and while we were sitting quietly across from the Beaver River, we spotted a Blue Heron hunting for his breakfast.
We hunted down our natural paint brushes, paint (wild grapes, blueberries, and crab apples) and objects to stick onto our artwork (leaves, cedar scales and grass).
One of our team-building activities was the create our favourite animals out of pipe cleaners. Some of our creations were a Wolf, Thunderbird, Salamander and Octopus.
Another activity that was completed was “The Maze”. Communication and memory was the name of the game!
Our students creating their art with natural paint brushes, mud, rocks, wood cookies and cold ash from the fire pit.
“The Village”. This was created by all students and everyone had their job. Some students worked on concrete (water and mud), digging holes, building homes and roping off future development.
Some of the artwork our students created today!
Today was an amazing muddy day full of adventure and creativity.
Great job Taven and Jack for starting their first fire without any help! What amazing stories we had around the fire as well, so make sure you ask your child what story they told. This meant we gave away our first Storytelling beads! Great job everyone!
Next Week – We are going to be looking into Environmental Science.
