Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

All about that food!

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Hi Friends!

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!

Thanks for stopping by!

Krista

Spoons and Mittens and Tire walls? Oh my.

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A close inspection of the bathroom wall in the Earthship

Hey Folks!

What better way to start our “Projects Day” than with a visit to one of Collingwood’s coolest projects – The Earthship. Aptly named because, like a spaceship or sailing ship, the Earthship gets everything it needs from the Earth and will be completely sustainable! This inspirational project taught us many things:

The potential of using recycled materials to build (ie. tires and bottles for walls)
Concepts around geothermal and passive heating
Creative ways for rain water collection
The significance of having a green house inside the house and a community garden out back.
The impact of volunteering – we heard that some students and their parents have worked on the Earthship too. We know that many hands make light work!

Maybe even most importantly, visiting the Earthship showed us the power of a dream come to life. A big thanks to “Principal” Matt for giving us a tour of his soon-to-be home and sharing with us the process of making his dream come true. Check out a recent article on it here or the website to volunteer and learn more.

Back at the school, we used this motivation to get into our own projects. After learning about our (fairly strict) guidelines, some students started a natural craft by beginning to carve wood into spoons. This project was a good lesson in visualizing, cultivating patience and taking things slow. We hope to have a finished project by the end of the semester!

Starting our spoons

Students also had the opportunity to tackle another big project using recycled material. They up-cycled an old fleece blanket into new mitten liners by hand sewing. Most students loved developing this new skill and made some pretty amazing mittens! We heard a lot of buzz about making these as Christmas gifts.

Homemade mitten liners

Throw in some slacklining, team building activities, and the beginnings of our fire-starter kits and we called it a day!

Congrats to our 2 Craft Beads and 1 Storytelling Bead recipients!

Next week:
Animal Tracking! We are off on a field trip to Loree Forest.

Cheers,
Matt and Kim

More pics for you:

Our big builders, in little bodies

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Hi Friends!

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!

Thanks for checking in this week!

Krista

Bonus Picture Below

Taven found a Banana Slug in our Bug hotel today!

Oh the places you will go

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Hi Friends!

“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!

Thanks for stopping by!

Krista

Bonus Pictures

Acrylics, oils? Pfffft… we’ve got grapes.

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Hey Folks,

Hard to believe we are more than half way through the trimester! What awesome weather we had this week (especially compared to last!) for jumping into our creative minds with Art Attack!

We started off the day as always with some free play, smudging and morning circle – except this time a number of students (and the teachers!) took advantage of one last day to wear their super creative Halloween costumes. From ladybugs, to anonymous, to zombies and even someone who “lost a fight to a tree”, we had it all. (Oh and that strange guy in the pictures? That’s Matt sans beard.)

What better way to kick off the day than with some physical literacy to bring down the sugar levels a wee bit. We jumped into a giant relay game of Tic-Tac-Toe, followed by our ultimate team challenge of “Lava Crossing”. This combines planning and strategics, communication, balance, teamwork, and a lot of patience to achieve the desired goal of crossing the lava river. Wednesday’s students even set up their own course during free play!

After snack, we headed out with colour tags to see just how colourful nature can be. We usually think of nature as green, brown and blue, but our students discovered that when we look closely we can see hundreds of different colours and shades. With that in mind, we put our creative hats on and headed out to our sit spots. While there, students made rough drafts of a painting they would like to make. Afterwards, they were given a canvas to create their masterpieces. The only catch? It had to be created solely using natural materials. Grapes for purple (complete with a grape pounding station), dandelions for yellow, dirt for brown, grass rubbings for green – the children got very creative. Twigs were suddenly being used as trees or frames, or even stands for the canvas itself. It was neat to watch all the ideas unfold.

After lunch (and some intense stilt walking), we headed to our fire pit where students put their fire skills to the test. We listened to a couple stories (congrats to our Bead recipients!) and made some walking sticks. We learned how to make a comfortable handle out of cord (congrats to the teaching bead given out for this!), carved some images or designs, and painted to our hearts content. Tuesday’s group even had time to make homemade play-dough!

We ended the day with a special Halloween treat – some Fair Trade chocolate. The students briefly learned about the importance of this mindful consumption. Find more information at http://fairtrade.ca/

Next week:
We dive into Environmental Science!

Check out the pictures below and have a great week,

Matt and Kim

Every child is an artist

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Hi Friends!

“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.

Thanks for stopping by,

Krista.

Check out our bonus pictures of our mud monsters!

7 Grandfather Teachings

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Hello again!

Thanks for checking in this week! With Summer put to bed and Fall around the corner our students focused on our First Nations 7 Grandfather Teachings, the Medicine Wheel and spent time in nature discovering their artistic side.

As always the students started the day off with free play/discovery and a First Nation Smudging Ceremony. One student wanted to pass around the smoking sage to all his fellow students which he did while all the other students respected the ceremony and were quiet and respectful.

Our students thought it would be a great idea to contribute to the 7 Grandfather Teachings and write nice things about each other. This positive information will be inserted into their journals as a reminder of how awesome they are! We also enjoyed a great hike around the property finding wild grapes (the kids did not like the sour ones), hornets nests, hand sized frogs and discovered a fish in the river which they caught and released.

We focused on our land and what it provides for us. The students created a map about what they think our grounds look like and came up with many designs and creations. They even created their own names for their spots such as “The Village,” Frog Town and Playground. We hiked to the back of our property and they spent some time creating dreamcatchers. The kids weren’t even scared of the Spider Woman legend! We then spent time telling stories around the campfire about bears.

Throughout the day we focused on the 7 Grandfather Teachings – which also represent our sticker system – ask them about it! Our students strive for these morals and values for every class and try to bring them into their everyday life.

Love – Eagle
Honesty – Jenu
Respect – Buffalo
Truth – Turtle
Courage – Bear
Wisdom – Beaver
Humility – Wolf

Our last goal was to visit the Farmers Pantry to visit local animals – goats, chickens, donkeys, ducks, lambs, and very large bunnies. They all picked grass and hay and got right in there to help feed the animals. We also went to pick fresh locally grown Macintosh apples. The kids ate more apples than they could pick while some students pretended they were lost and had to climb to the top of the trees to find their way out!

We did! Phew.

A shout out to one of our students that brought in a very special fossil he found while on a hike. After a couple fun guesses of what type of foot print it was – velociraptor or baby T-rex, we came to the conclusion it was some form of bird. We are still trying to figure it out! We also gave away a NEW bead this week – The storytelling bead. Thanks Jack for bringing in your foot fossil!

Next Week:

FIELD TRIP: We are focusing on water week! Please bring extra clothes and a towel just incase, because we will be canoeing down the Beaver River in the afternoon! Pick up time will be as usual.

What we will be providing: Boats, life jackets, and paddles. If your student had their own PFD please feel free to bring it along.

See you next week!

Krista

Art Attack!

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Hey Folks!

At Forest School, we develop a lot of skills: physical and emotional intelligence, ecological literacy, and much more. In more traditional school terms, we’ve had a heavy focus on Science, Physical Education, and English, with some Art and even Math included in there. Usually, we pick a topic and focus our lessons around it. This week we decided to focus on a subject rather than topic, Art, and see where that took us through our student-led, emergent and inquiry-based learning. Hence both days unfolding differently.

Remember that old TV show Art Attack? It was all the rage when we were growing up. So we decided to replicate that this week as our culminating project… the only catch? In order to get the materials, the students had to “buy” them with points earned through team-building challenges and other art projects throughout the day.

Our first project was a cheerio bird feeder to replace our old pb ones in our sit spots. The Red tails then drew pictures of all the birds they thought would visit their feeders, as the Snowy Owls came up with conversational pieces (and dramatic plays) of the what the birds were up to in their sit spot and saying to each other. Quite a treat to see your children’s imagination at play here!

Throughout the day students completed a lot of team-building challenges. These focus on developing teamwork, communication and trust among participants. The activities have no right answer, the learning being the process. The students were put in a variety scenarios – cross through the “spider web”, navigate lava rivers, become an ant on a log and switch places with everyone, flip the tarp over without getting off, and the human knot – whatever the case they were up for the challenge. And they earned valuable points along the way for their final masterpiece. In some cases, not all attempts were a “success” in terms of completion. But the debriefing process that ensued was full of learning, and incredible to watch and facilitate.

Both groups had a great time making their new hiking sticks as well. Using a variety of paints, hemp strings and carving, the students came up with some beautiful pieces of usable art. And even built a totem pole for our Forest Hut area.

The final project involved using our “loose parts” (anything that can be moved, natural or not, to create things). From high up on fossil mountain, the teachers watched as the students used the material they had earned, along with things in their surroundings to create a masterpiece from the bird’s eye view.

As for beads, we gave our very first peer support bead this week! We also gave out a whole bunch of craft beads for some awesome crafts, including the titanic, a bird/squirrel house, a homemade starbucks mug, a clay teepee and natural puppets.

See you next week!

Kim and Matt