Hi Friends,

Our little birds

This week at Forest School was dedicated to continuing our education about our feathred little friends, Birds! With our in-class lessons and hands on games, we packed our day full of physical activity. This morning we put our students to the test, and worked together to start a fire without a match! Thanks Aaron for  sharing your flint and steel,  and great job to Jack for starting it, we even timed it at 7 minutes and 49 seconds. Between our fire starting and teaching each other how to fish, we discovered our second Beaver! We even found 3 bird nests with mommy protecting her eggs, which fit our curriculum perfectly. Check out our epic day!

Our day was too beautiful to be inside, so we only spent one lesson indoors. There was a big discussion about what makes a bird, a bird!  Is it their feathers, wings, beak, hollow bones or just their great personality? Either way birds are pretty cool animals and getting the chance to not just discuss them, but feel their feathers, and get up close an personal with their nests is a great opportunity to invoke more curiosity. While we spent some time on our journals, we also took a moment to create our “Forest School Binoculars” out of toilet paper rolls. Through out our day we saw many Canadian Geese, Robins, Chickadee’s and Turkey Vultures.

 Our students dove right into their role of  Canadian Geese for the game “Canadian Geese Migration” this morning. Our little birds had to migrate down South safely, and be aware of all the risks associated with migration. Our flock of birds had to fly from each resting stop, making their way through beautiful landscapes full of clean water and food , natural disasters, oil spills and landfills and a SURPRISE from the hunters! Our students discovered some of the challenges these birds face on a daily basis, and that nature isn’t nice all the time. It was sad to say not all Canadian Geese survived, with starting with 9, and ended up with 2!

This afternoon we let our creativity take over, and  made natural bird feeders with peanut butter, honey, bird seed, pine cones and sticks. Some of our students even made “human-feeders” with  bracelets and necklaces made from Cheerios and pipe cleaners which led us into our bird feeder game, and then into the ultimate “Chickadee Vs Blue Jays”. It’s not always easy being a bird, our little Chickadee’s had to fly to the bird feeders and take their food back to their nests, but WAIT! Those pesky Blue Jays are trying to steal food from the Chickadee’s nest! All of our little birds worked so hard to fill their nest with food, but the Blue Jays won the battle,  flying away with  25 pieces of food. Good news is all birds went home with some food in their nests!

Today there was an abundance of Love, Wisdom and Respect stickers earned! We are getting close to some prizes and Bingo beads! Thank you to Izzy for bringing in your Whale book, it was super awesome to look at all those pictures, Congrats on the Show and Tell Bead!

Next Week – We will be working on some new, and unfinished projects!

Until Next Week,

Krista