After some time building with our loose parts and having a bonfire, students’ imaginations came alive as all the snow on the ground became a lake. They were trapped on an island (a-frame climbing gym), trying to escape the sharks (teachers), while jumping from bridge to bridge (stumps). Our students soon wanted to go in the “water” jumping into the role of baby whales, with the shark as their leader. It sounds like a crazy story, but it’s one of the wonderful experiences we can’t ever plan as teachers but get the privilege of being co-conspirators in this play – one of the million reasons we love doing what we do. When given the space, time and opportunity, it’s truly amazing to see what happens.
After snack, the tone was set with one of our favourite books: “We’re going on a bear hunt”. So naturally, we went on a bear hunt! With frog nets in hand we were off through the woods. We slowed down and quietly stalked our way through the forest, listening for any clues. And while we didn’t find a bear, we swear we may have heard one and heard a lot of other critters along the way, too.
After lunch, we jumped into the roles of prey and predator – fox vs rabbit, where the rabbits could escape to their burrows (black tubes) to avoid getting tagged. This turned into a lot of fun crawling and worming our way through the tubes, until we headed out on our next adventure to the “Fort”. Here we pushed comfort zones climbing trees and forts, swung on the swings, balanced on beams and slid on slides for the last part of of the day. And as you know, it was muddy!!
What a beautiful day we had with our Chickadees on Tuesday at FNS!
After our ceremonial cleansing smudge and morning circle, we started our day with wonderful and imaginative play in the snow that led to us chasing one another, following tracks of all of our animal friends, and building forts, tunnels and fires. During our snack break, we read one of Dr. Seuss’ classic environmental stories, The Lorax. To our surprise, students were determined to trap their very own Bar-Ba-Loot, the bear-like creatures that live in the forest filled with Truffula Trees. Everyone was so curious about the Bar-Ba-Loot because although we have never seen one before, we take good care of our trees at FSFNS so we knew they must be in the area! So students went to work drawing their designs and figuring out all of the necessary equipment before creating their very own Bar-Ba-Loot trap using pulley systems, ropes and a bucket! We checked it often and were ecstatic to discover that one must have come to visit, but was able to escape during lunch break! How exciting! We followed its tracks around for a while – but weren’t able to see it! If your child is keen to build a Bar-Ba-Loot trap at home, this might be why! Let us know if you have any sightings…
Thankfully, these kids care a WHOLE awful lot!
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
― Dr. Seuss
After lunch, we were joined by our new Tuesday (and Thursday) teacher, Aislinn, and her two wonderful puppies! We spent the afternoon snowshoeing to Lakeside Campsite, where we played on the thick ice, built another fire and enjoyed some ice cream! That’s right – Ice Cream! We used some especially fresh and clean snow, coconut milk, vanilla and a touch of maple syrup. It turned out better than we thought and was a nice treat around our closing fire too!
What an exceptional day we had playing and learning together!
Our Chickadees braved the cool temperatures and spent the day exploring and playing in the snow. Our day started as most days do with unstructured time and free play. Students were eager to explore our new tunnels, uncover what seemed like endless ice and play games, including our new favourite “Track and Seek” where we follow people’s tracks in the snow to find them.
After snack and a quick warm up with a roaring fire in our prospector tent, we headed west to Fossil Mountain. We followed rabbit tracks and mice tunnels to get there and after arriving at our destination, Fossil Mountain proved quite slippery! With a bunch of teamwork, a lot of stumbles and the help of the rope, we were able to get everyone to the top. And it was well worth it for the slide down!
Afterwards we went to check on our snow caves and become “hibernating animals” (we just love the imaginations!). We brought along our tube also, and took turns sliding down the hills!
After lunch, some stories and some creative work with our journals, we played a few more games together, jumped into different imaginary roles and had some good old fashioned cloud watching. Then we called it a day!
We had a wonderful last week of FNS and enjoyed adventuring around our nature playground in the freshly fallen snow. Of course, what better way to say good bye to some of our favourite places than by spending some quality time in them! Throughout the week, students enjoyed visiting various places, like Riverside Campsite, Ducky’s Campsite, Mysterious Forest, or circumnavigating the pond. It has been quite powerful to hear stories and reminisce about so many positive experiences and memories from the fall along the way. Your children have truly built a deep connection to the land and to one another.
On Tuesday, students spent some time building new snow castles and tapping into their creativity and imaginations to play and work together with their natural loose parts. They collaboratively moved the large pipes from our obstacle course to build an incredible human-size subnivean zone, and of course this also became an incredible new space for creative play and our new favourite competitive game, ga-ga ball! This treat was used and appreciated all week by other classes.
On Wednesday, we were treated with the presence of a metal detector brought in by one of our students. We went on treasure hunts and were rewarded with the uncovering of a lost tool from earlier in the Fall. Students also extended our collaborative loose parts to build a giant slide behind the school house, which is only getting more and more fun with the coming snow!
A significant experience arose for us on Thursday, as we were on our way to Mysterious Forest. Students followed some interesting tracks that led us to an up close understanding and investigation of the life-cycle. We uncovered the story of a fox vs. rabbit battle scene, including a sacrificed rabbit, scavenger prints from crows, and happy solitary fox prints trotting across the newly frozen pond. Students were captivated by this experience and truly intrigued by the layers that could be unpacked from a successful, natural hunting experience. Students brainstormed that the fox (and other scavengers) gain food for themselves/their family; birds could use the remaining fur for nests; and overall we gained a deeper understanding of predator-prey relationships and population size. And although we mourned the rabbit, we thanked her for her sacrifice and remembered our significant “Blueberry” experience from 2 years ago, where after a discovering a similar scenario, a few weeks later we were graced with the presence of four little fox pups, allowing for a more thorough and deeper understanding of the life-cycle.
Friday we spent time adventuring out to our Riverside Camp Site and around the big pond, following tracks, and creating stories. We enjoyed creating challenges and working together (or competing) to gain our personal bests, and even had time to explore the buildings of our village.
Throughout the week we also celebrated Winter Solstice with the lightning of ice candles, looking into the science behind shortest day of the year and its significance, and learning about some traditions from different cultures (looking at the pomander, an oranges studded with cloves) and other stories from the past. This is a very important day of the year for us and marks a new beginning.
We closed our fall session by gathering in a fire ceremony and sharing our favourite memories and experiences together. What a fun and thoughtful way to kick off the holidays!
We wish everyone a wonderful holiday, filled with joy, family, friends, adventure and play! Thanks for taking part in this Fall Adventure with us and we look forward to seeing you in the Winter!
Thanks for checking into the blog this week. We spent time learning about animal tracks and were fully prepared to discover all of the new (and old) prints on our beautiful property. To understand tracks better, students focused on learning various parts of a print, how/what to measure to correctly identify it using a field guide and how to use the print information to tell us about what’s happening (stride, straddle, direction of travel). Is the animal galloping, pacing, or stalking? Are they conserving energy or doubling back on their tracks? Are they moving to and from specific places, like shelter, food or water?
Whether we heard animals rustling, saw tracks, scat or deer rubbings, felt chew marks or scratches on trees, or smelled (though not nearly as well as animals!) animals, we could use all of our senses to discover various large, medium and small signs of animals nearby. We soon learned that animal tracking is both a science and an art- it’s not just about the actual print; we also need to be aware and process the entire environment while tracking to get a complete sense of the story!
Tuesday saw us jump into the role of animals with a game of Survival to start us off. We then headed out and around Mysterious Forest, where we discovered a lot of coyote scat, and prints, rabbit signs, and different burrows. Tuesday even brought the addition of Frarles (or Fred/Charles) our lovable, crooked live Christmas tree. Students also got crafty with some homemade wreaths, decorations and other play dough figures.
On Wednesday, students decided to stay close to a water source and we were amazed by all of the activity! We were able to track prints, discover more scat, and even follow a trail of a coyote stalking a goose – feathers, bones and all! Students seemed incredibly understanding after discovering a loss like this, especially when we explored the topic of needing to survive and took a deeper look at the life cycle. We also ventured off site to do some stalking of our own with the community healthy kids GPS challenge!
On Thursday, with freshly fallen snow, students enjoyed seeing some fresh squirrel, chipmunk and rabbit tracks in between the trees. We even ventured to the far end of our property for the first time, all the way past the maple forest and sugar shack. We spent some quality time out there with newly invented student-led survival and camouflage games.
On Friday, students were keen to go to both the water source and Mysterious Forest on the hunt for more tracks! It was really fun to see them using the guidebooks independently and creating their own understanding about what unfolded (be it an epic battle scene or a squirrel dance party after finding a lost nut!) Tracking animal prints lets us explore outside, feel closer to nature and hone our creativity and imagination! We also had a special guest – Mrs. Simpson (Matt’s Mom) – who taught us some American Sign Language to go along with the creatures we discovered. Thanks Sandi!
A special thanks to our Thursday class as well for diving in to help set up part of our new amazing plans for the winter: a Prospector Tent, with a wonderful wood stove!!! We love how helpful and curious our Forest School students are and how keen they were to be involved in this new addition. Just in time too for our winter session!
Despite having some warm places, please remember to bring extra clothing. In particular, we consider boots, hats, mitts and neck warmers a mandatory part of our outer wear. When these inevitably get wet, we can dry them by the fire/heater and wear our extras in the meantime! Remember, with our freshly welcomed snow, always wear snow pants/jacket, with some good fleece and wick away layered clothing underneath.
It was a great week here at Forest School and we had a lot of fun as teachers exploring new places and old favourites with our students. On Monday, we held a trial day to introduce new children to FNS. It was a great day full of sharing our special places at Bygone Days, hiking, playing, making shelters, fires and building with hand tools. Thanks to all those who came out, we had a blast!
Once a semester we like take a field trip to explore our local trails. We live in a beautiful area and believe that place-based education extends to our community as a whole. This week, we went to 4 different natural places with a goal to explore, have fun and learn a few things along the way.
Tuesday – Clendennan Dam
Located in Clarksburg, this place is a gem! After checking out the dam (and racing sticks over it) we headed along the trails. This hike offers a beautiful cedar forest, perfect for tree climbing as our students soon found out. The Chickadees set up camp and played around while the Snowy Owls headed further down the trail – trampled across bridges, along the cliffs, through the forest and finally out to the Beaver River. Along the way we saw lots of animal prints, fish and after lunch we were even treated with the discovery of a Beaver Dam.
Wednesday – Duncan (Bruce Trail)
The Collingwood and Heathcote FNS’s joined forces for this day as we stomped our way through some of the muddiest trails we’ve ever seen… and you probably already know this from the state of your child’s clothing. But muddy kids = happy kids, right?!
We hiked for a bit, down hills, across streams and up ladders over fences then chose a nice spot to hunker down for lunch. While there, unstructured time unfolded in various ways – building forts (which became zombie refuges), fairy cities with playgrounds and restaurants, and good old fashioned group games.
Thursday – Eleventh Line Trail
With the weather on Thursday our plans changed and we spent a good half of the day exploring and hiking around our own property. In the afternoon, we stayed a bit closer to home and had an awesome time splashing through puddles, navigating log balancing beams and searching for the perfect hiking stick. Oh, and again, avoiding the zombies on the Deer Trail of course! Kudos to these kids for braving (and embracing) the wild rain and snow!
Friday – Kolapore
Friday was a special day and with the awesome weather we were able to explore a really special place – Al’s Cave. Located close to Metcalfe Rock along a side trail, Al’s cave is home to a Geocache. After a crash course in Geocaching, students were given the GPS and led the way. After some twists and turns, and climbs and descents, we found our way and entered the cave. After a bit more looking we were able to locate the Geocache, swap prizes, write our name’s down and learn about Al and why this place is so important to us. When we returned to the school, students were so excited we continued our Geocache adventure and uncovered 3 more!
It was a really fun week, and we’d encourage you to explore these places with your kids! Let us know if you need anymore details to get there! Before we wrap up, we wanted to send out a BIG WELCOME to our new students this week and last. It’s exciting seeing our community growing!
A big thank you to all of the students who helped create our wonderful FNS float for the parade – it looked fabulous and was a great group project!
Next Week: Wild About Maps!!
Cheers,
The Forest School Team
(Matt, Kim and Tamara – and so many more!)
Happy Solstice! After our core routines this week and a brainstorm on teamwork, our days differed immensely in what student-interests led us to. We book-ended all days with sage and sit spots in the morning, and a fire at the end, but otherwise they were so unique, let’s sum them up separately.
TUESDAY
We had some eager helpers on Tuesday and started off by weeding the garden and planting some tomato plants in anticipation of our Fall Harvest next school year. The majority of our day was spent “farming” and building gardens in our sit spots, developing clay factories (which turned into clay all over the place!), and harvesting wild edibles to eat in a salad. Some lucky adventurers even gathered some wild strawberries!
Students also built a brand new fire pit, complete with rock ring which we used for our end of the day fire. Despite the rain (or maybe because of?…), we still had a great time. After a game of Capture the Flag, we even had time to hang our homemade bat house SW facing high in Willow Tree… we’ll see if anything moves in!
(PS – since we were on a camp trip, we didn’t have time to put up photos for Tuesday’s canoeing last week, so if you scroll to the very bottom, you’ll find some there.)
Wednesday
Our Wednesday class dove into what they love best – catching aquatic creatures and manipulating the movement of water with waterfalls, rapids and dug out riverbeds. Everyone had a job in this project – digger, dammer, dumper and more. And what a lucky day we had with the discovery of many 4+ leaf clovers!!!
We headed out to our sit spots, and student-interest kept us there for most of the morning. Like Tuesday, we saw students dive into the clay market (quite literally!) and create a whole bunch of infrastructure and objectives. Others could be found trying their luck at fishing (no bites this time), collecting ample amounts of wild strawberries, transplanting wild edibles into their personal gardens, and carving cutlery from wood.
Another reoccurring theme throughout the day was ants and their colonies and nests. We had a lengthy and great debate about whether or not to capture some ants and create our own ants in a jar – and in the end, everyone agreed that we should leave these fellas be. Later in the day the students even created an epic ant home (or mansion) and the Painted Turtle group sit spot! And speaking of which, this area had quite the facelift with everyone pitching in to create a new reading circle with stumps and boards, and cleaning all the garbage along the way.
A big thanks to our volunteer parent, Jamila, who lent some helping hands of her own today!
Thursday
The pond, as usual, was a huge hit on Thursday and we were able to identify new species of critters that lurked under the leaves. After our check-ins (and by popular demand) we played some team games including our favourite, Survival, where students learned that it’s not just humans who work together and lend a helping hand. Afterwards (when the rain came briefly), we laid out and drew up plans for a future “Nature” playground that we want to develop at the site! Students came up with some really practical, feasible and awesome ideas! We hope to put some of them in place in the near future.
Before embarking on our afternoon, we held an impromptu funeral for “Max” the toad, a poor fella we came across today. This was topped off with a great rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb on the the recorder, played by one of our students. Throughout the day we visited some new places, including the reading circle created by Wed’s group and the fire pit created by Tues’ group, where student’s created their very own imaginative stories to share with each other around the fire.
Alas, some sad news – we say goodbye to Krista this week as she won’t be here next week! A HUGE THANKS for all you do for the students and the program!
Congrats to our Beads Recipients: 2 Tracking beads, a handful of Sit Spot bead, 2 Colouring beads, 2 Curiosity bead, 2 Music beads, 3 Littlerless Lunch beads, and 4 storytelling beads!
Next Week: Hard to believe it’s the last day of the year! We’d like to invite all families to our final wrap-up at 3:15 pm at Bygone Days. It will take about 20 minutes.
Another great day in the books with our amazing students, this week at Forest School was all about reflection and hiking! After our morning smudge circle, our class raced to the van and headed to one of our favourite Brue Trail hike spots – Loree Forest. The past two rainy days gave us a great opportunity to find animal tracks in the soft mud (fox, deer and dog..or maybe wolves), the kids earned some beads as well!
Our students also came across huge patches of poison ivy, salamanders, garter snakes, caterpillars, centipedes, worms, slugs and an abundance of “Jack in the pulpit” flowers.
Our hike took us to the top of the Georgian Peaks, and after our snack and check ins, we had an in depth discussion about bullying. It was amazing to see our students support each other, there was no shortage of great advice, thats for sure. Sometimes we forget how hard it is to be a kid these days, but the courage to ask for help makes it a lot easier. Afterwards, we took some time to relax in the beautiful sunshine and reflect on our past week.
Within our afternoon our kids kept super busy by revisiting their favourite game “Farmer”, while some went for an epic frog hunt (17 in total), and others spent time building animal shelters. Sticking with our reflection theme, we thought back to our morning hike and wrote down what we saw, smelled, heard and touched. Our class is becoming incredibly independent and creating self-led activities. We are SO proud!
Today we formed even stronger bonds with each other by sharing advice, and encouragement. All of the support our students recieve goes along way outside of out classroom. Students gained more show and share beads, litter less lunch beads, fire beads, animal tracking beads and everyone deserved an exciting Al bead. Congrats!
Next week – We are going to be paddling the Beaver River.
This week at Forest School we looked at our Eco System, and tied in some fun games along the way! It also brought opportunities for new discoveries, and an activity we haven’t done since last September, frog hunting! After our morning routines, our day started with an intense football game to get our blood pumping. We also challenged our kids with food-chain games along with an Eco System freeze tag! We were so active enjoying the beautiful spring weather, and a little too clean – so we had to get a little dirty, or it just wouldn’t be Forest School.
Our main lesson of the day was to learn about our Consumers (Animals and Humans), Producers (Plants that grow from the ground), and Decomposers (Slugs, Snails and Worms). We tested our knowledge with a skill testing questions, a mix and match game, and though it came challenging for all at the end of the game, we all had a better understanding of each topic. With all the hard work we did, it paid off and we got a fun game out of it!
So while we were on our hike surrounded by tons of producers, looking for evidence of consumers (Racoon tracks, Beaver and Canadian Geese) and finding decomposers (Snails, Worms and centipedes) we spotted our FIRST Beaver of the season! We now have a better idea of who is chopping down all those trees! It was a beautiful day to relax and so we spent a large part of our afternoon working on our sit spots where we reflect, write in our journals and explore our 5 senses. Using the knowledge from our earlier lesson, we brainstormed examples of Consumers, Producers and Decomposers and used our imagination to write a story about their favourite animal along with a food chain associated with them.
With all of the beautiful sunshine and heat today, we were over joyed to see our first frog of the season as well, which lead into an impromptu frog hunt! Our kids didn’t lose any agility over the Winter to catch our little friends, and in total we caught 11 Frogs! All frogs went back home safe and sound. Along with this fun activity, we even had time at the end of the day to do some fishing. Unfortunately we didn’t catch anything this week, but we are looking forward to our next opportunity.
Our Morning Glory starting to sprout
This week was full of Wisdom stickers, Respect sticker and Love. Exciting news – we are getting close to some prizes! There was also 1 Al bead earned, 4 Litterless Lunch and 2 Show and Tell Beads.
Next Week – We are going to be looking into the fun and exciting world of Birds!
This week Forest School brought us another day packed full of learning, exploration and discovery. When our students arrived this morning, we were shocked to discover the difference in the landscape on our property from last week. It was amazing to see how high the Beaver River rose, but with the river taking away some of hiking paths, it gave us an opportunity to explore new areas.
Our topic this week was all about our local animals, we spent our morning playing games like “Ocelot tag” which was led by Emily, one of our fellow students. Some highlights of the day were making nests, continuing building our shelters and working towards starting fires without matches. We also brought out our collection of animal prints, and took time to learn 5 new footprints to add to our journals, as well as playing a footprint matching game to test our knowledge! Our big winner was Taven for getting 6 out of 9 correct.
While we explored the great outdoors, we tried to live like animals. Imagination play, and working on our imitation animal calls provided great opportunities for our students to have a good laugh. Some of us pretended to be beavers, dinosaurs, wolves, and sloths – and some even hugged trees! Our 3 epic games of “camouflage” was a great way to mimic animals hiding from their predator, and an awesome segway into our main lesson of learning, and teaching their fellow peers something new about their favorite animal. We dove right into our animal books, and found all we could about our furry, and not so furry little friends. Some of the animals we learned about were the Pig, Fox, Armadillo, Yellow Jacket, Wolf, Chickadee, Red headed Woodpecker and Coyote. Great job everyone for all your efforts in researching the animals you wanted to learn more about!
Our last fun activity of the day, in light of the holiday fast approaching, was to have an Easter egg Hunt! All were found except 2! Maybe well find them next week as a little treat!
We would like to send out a BIG thank-you for all the show and tells today – 4 in total! We had a cool branding piece brought in on some wood, wolf information books, flint & steel, and a super neat rock with crystals inside called a geode! We are SUPER lucky that we all love to share, and teach each other new things! Watching our students be so intrigued by the information each individual possesses is incredible! Each, and every one of our amazing Forest School kids teaches us something valuable, and interesting each day!
This week was full of support! 8 Respect and Love stickers, 5 wisdom stickers, along with 1 peer support bead.
Next week – We will going off property to explore more of the Bruce Trail! Get ready for some hiking!
