Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Hibernate, migrate or keep active!

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Hi everyone!

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!

Next week – Field Trip!

Have a great week

Neal and Krista

Our day was awesome!

Subnivean Cities

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Making our own Subnivean Zones

Hey Everyone,

What an interesting day we had for our ~~Winter~~, wait scratch that, Freezing Rain Survival days. We went into this expecting to create quinzees and spend all day in the snow, but who could’ve guessed our snow would turn to ice so quickly!? So what can we do but make the best of the situation?? And that’s exactly what we did.

Our day was focused on what animals do to survive during the winter. After visualizing and becoming the animal of their choice, students were asked what they would do to survive in the winter. Some said they would sleep, others would hunt and others said they would move to somewhere warm. This covered all of our bases and in essence they already knew: hibernate, stay active, or migrate.

After reading an incredible story (Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner – seriously check it out if you don’t have it) to set the tone for the day, the students designed their own “Subnivean Cities”. This under-snow layer captivated the imagination of students, and we were even able to explore the real thing outside once the rain subsided.

Over and Under the Snow

To get a little more in depth with hibernation, students were teamed up and given a jar half-full of water. Their mission? To ensure this water doesn’t freeze even after being left outside for a week. Students attacked this challenge head on and started to come up with super creative ideas to insulate and protect the water. The water jars became their “Frogs”, Snakes” or “Turtles”, and when the layers were complete they now needed a safe space to hibernate. Outside the students searched and found ideal places for their “amphibians” and “reptiles” to sleep… buried deep in the ground, insulated by debris, dirt and snow. We’ll see what happens next week!

Insulating our “frogs” for hibernation

Add in some time playing student-created games, tracking animals and one another, engaging in a creative Forest School buff fashion show, having a bonfire while reading legend, and completing an adventurous hike to find a geocache, and it seems we had quite a busy day.

And still the students returned to the classroom for one final challenge. In partners, they were given a particular bird species outlined like a Pokemon Card that showed their strengths, habits, diets etc. As this specific type of bird, students had to navigate a human-sized board game to show just how difficult migration can be and the potential threats that birds can face en-route. By the end, only a couple groups were able to migrate safely, but we developed really great insight about birds and their journeys during the winter.

(We had a request from a student for a copy of this game – it can be printed out by clicking here)

Migrating

Congratulations to our 3 Show and Tell bead recipients for bringing in a spider man web shooter, a handmade pair of moccasins and some awesome Polaroid pictures. We also gave out 2 musical beads for some stellar renditions of songs from the Lion King and a Bravery Bead!

Next Week:
Field Trip! We’ll be heading out to do some Cross Country Skiing!

We sure had practice with our balance on all that ice this week – here’s hoping for some snow next week.
Matt and Kim

More Photos:

Principal Jennie salting the driveway – thanks!

Who needs snow for snowshoes…

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Hi Friends!

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?

Thanks for checking in!

Neal and Krista

Continue to check out our day!

Here for a good time, not a long time..

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Hi Friends!

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 1^st 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!

Krista

Follow Me!

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Hey Everyone,

Though tough for drivers, the snowstorm over the weekend was sure welcomed by us! It gave the perfect amount of time for local animals to run around and have their prints frozen in place for us to discover. As the temperatures warmed up, we were able to also see lots of tracks captured in the mud.

Tracking animals was our goal this week – and we were after much more than just footprints. Deer hair on trees, animal pee and, yes, even some coyote scat were all welcomed signs. We also used our ears to hear if animals were giving themselves away… turns out there is a lot of noise in silence.

Overall, we found a bunch of different animal tracks. Lots of white-tailed deer, some red foxes, rabbits, geese and other birds, and of course, Aden! He also gave us a first hand look at canine paws – toes, claws, dew-claws, and the heel. Some students even put their skills to use to track the teachers and find them!

On both days, and in different areas throughout Loree forests, the children were drawn to the hills and made impromptu slides with all the snow. It was magical to see the imagination, teamwork and good old fashion fun come to life.

Towards the end of the day, after completing Track ID 101, finding tracks, GPS tracking, and interpreting a picture of tracks by creating a story of what happened, the students had one more task to complete before receiving their Animal Tracking Beads: survive “Survival”. And they did. Congrats to all our new Tracking Bead recipients!

In addition to the Animal tracking beads, we gave out a record this week – 3 beads to one student, in one day! A couple of people received the Nature Lover Bead, other earned their Reflection Beads (for 15+ journal entries), a few creative Craft Beads were distributed, and a wonderful Teaching Bead on the origins of Popcorn. With only 2 weeks left, please encourage your children to finish up any bead work!

Next Week:
Shelters!!!

FRIENDLY REMINDERS:
Even though we are now into some Winter weather, we are still pretty comfortable at Bygone days. We plan to be outside as much as possible so please remember to send your children with layers… too many is better than not enough. At minimum your child needs a good warm toque and mittens/gloves, warm coat and snow pants, with a back up pair of splash pants. A back-up pair of gloves and hats would be good too. Remember – we are out exploring and sometimes that means snow, puddles, mud, etc. Thanks to everyone who is ensuring this – learning can’t happen when we are cold.

Our classroom is unheated and usually not much warmer than outside. On our end, we have:
A new Chiminea to have a fire going nearby
Small heaters to dry gloves
A kettle and tea (please send your child with a mug if they would like some; and it warms the hands!)
Extra gloves/hats just in case; and
For especially cold days, access to a warm space at the Youth Centre (though this is our last resort)

And one final thing! We’ve had some inquiries about Forest School for the winter semester. Just to clarify, some parents thought their children were going to be automatically enrolled in the winter semester which is not the case. If you want to enroll for the winter semester, you need to go to https://fsforestschool.com/register/. Or you can email Jennie Elmslie at freespirittours@hotmail.com . Spaces are beginning to fill up!

Challenge: Go out and explore this week with your child!

Thanks!
Matt and Kim

More photos:

Footprints come in all shapes and sizes

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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 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!

Krista

We strive to survive

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Hi Friends!

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.

Thanks for checking in this week!

Krista

Bonus Pictures of our awesome day.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories

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Hey Everyone!

We are once again happy to welcome new students to our program this week, and a big thanks to current students for being so welcoming.

Given that this is Earth week culminating with Earth Day on Friday, we thought what better way to celebrate than understanding how to minimize our environmental impact through Leave No Trace programming? The 7 principles of LNT promote responsible outdoor recreation with the hope of inspiring respect for (and stewardship of) natural spaces. For more info please click here.

Though our two days were slightly different, they both unfolded using these principles, so let’s recap one at a time.

1. Know Before You Go
We set the scene: An exploratory hike later on in the afternoon to a new space on the property (off property on Thursday) we had yet to go. Our first goal? Being prepared to go into this wild place. We pulled out an empty backpack and asked the students what we needed to bring. They chose from things scattered around the property and made sure we had everything possible that we would need, from sunscreen to water, to a compass and map, even marshmallows in case we got lost. We were ready for anything.

2. Choose the right path
Essentially this means stay on the trail and camp on durable surfaces. We played a great team-building game to highlight the importance of not straying from the path. The students had to find their way across a grid path, with only one correct way. Step on the wrong square, and you just squashed an endangered species (or got poison ivy, or stuck in quicksand, etc)! Finally, all students made it through the secret path to the durable campsite, and were so excited we had to do it again.

3. Respect Wildlife
At lunchtime, the teachers played obnoxious visitors. Their target? The herd of snowy owls and red tailed hawks eating quietly in the sun. While one teacher stayed back the required 200 feet with binoculars, the other got much too close, was much too loud and even fed the animals candy! No worries though – he was eventually taken down by the pack. Afterwards, this activity led to a very insightful debrief with the students drawing important parallels with the natural world.

4. Trash is Trash
We started with a visualization of a special place the students had. Then we asked what would ruin this for them. Garbage was the number one answer (followed closely by noise). So on our epic hike the students brought along bags and did a shoreline clean-up (around the other side of Willow Lake Wednesday; bay front clean-up on Thursday with Transition Collingwood and a class from CCI). Multiple full garbage bags worth of trash and recycling were collected! Students are also well aware that we pack out what we pack in.

5. Respect Others
Now known as “love your neighbour”, the students had a good discussion around the fire and in the classroom about how we can respect other people who are enjoying nature as well. The big rule: Don’t let our fun ruin other people’s fun.

6. Be careful with fire!
We are always careful with fire, but this week we learned how to make sure we have fires that leave minimal impacts for the environment. Never burn garbage, always use existing fire pits when possible, clean it up after, only use dead, down and dry wood… students were already well aware of this. One new thing we tried though was cooking on a camp stove. We made a delicious apple cider.

7. Leave what you find
This was one of the harder lessons to learn and understand. We had the students build an art piece of natural materials to show off to the others. We did a gallery walk after, having everyone explain what they made. We then took away a rock or stick, without saying a thing, from each piece. The students reflected on this afterwards that it did not feel good to have their materials taken. This was a catalyst to talk about leaving things in nature for all people to enjoy and really hit home for some folks.

Emergent Learning Alert!
On Thursday we arrived to a mystery scene in front of the school house – fur, blood and scat. Students successfully identified the fur as rabbit and the scat gave away the culprit – a fox (it appears to have moved in under the church). We decided to take time to read a legend about life-cycles and the students were able to put a positive spin on this – the fox needed to feed her pups. We found more evidence of the rabbit and students wanted to hold an impromptu funeral for it (now known as “Blueberry”). The eulogies varied, but were all empathetic. We made a little tombstone, along with a fitting offering of blueberries and sage.

And that’s it – along with our normal sit spot time and other core routines, including free play, it was a busy day! For all their hard work today, students received Leave No Trace bag tags, stickers and our brand new “Leave No Tracer” bead.

Speaking of beads, this week we gave out 5 journaling beads and 2 craft beads, one for a stone/stick hammer and another for a 5 finger family. Congrats!

It’s time for planting in the next 2 weeks, so if your kid is looking through the compost for seeds, don’t be alarmed!

Until next time,
Matt and Kim

Catch me if you can

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Hey Everyone,

First off, a big WELCOME to our new students!

It seems like winter just won’t leave us alone – which we took full advantage of this week. The fresh layer of snow was perfect for seeking out and learning about animal tracks.

We began the day by checking “baited areas” to see if any creatures had visited and lucky for us, we had a hungry neighbourhood vole. Before learning the ins and out of tracking though, we tracked each other in a game we like to call Track and Seek. The students dove right in, tried to throw the other group off their trail while searching out shelter to hide in. Along the way, we were pleasantly surprised to find goose, rabbit and many more tracks.

Afterwards, we took the classroom to learn about the different parts and types of animal tracks. We even had a helping “paw” from Aden who was happy to show off his claws, toes, heel and dew claws. After a legend about animals, the students designed their own “monsters” and “monster tracks”. The ideas and explanations were incredibly creative! Then the students were given field guides and we were off to the 11th Line Trails. Our goal: to find the tracks of a white-tailed deer and red fox.

And did we ever reach our goal! The students were able to successfully identify dog, fox, deer, squirrel and rabbit tracks. Not only that, using the guide they were able to determine the speed at which the animals were traveling, which led to an epic tale (both days independently!) of the “rabbit” getting away from the “fox” (with a happy ending as we found no evidence to the contrary!)

Both groups independently got into “parkour” on the trails. Jumping from safe spot to safe spot when the trails were flooded. “I feel so ALIVE!” is the quote of the week from one student. Seems the weather can never bring us down at Forest School, and a big kudos to all the positive attitudes of the students.

As for beads, congratulations to our recipients this week! We gave away 2 group beads for excellent games invented and then led by students, one called Soccer Ball Track and Seek and the other called Sick Bug.

We are looking forward to next week, and hopefully some nice sunny days.

Matt and Kim