This week at Forest School we spent our last day of Winter semester building shelters for our community, student led games and reflecting on our time spent with each other. A little fun was also spent around the fire-creating banana boats. Another epic day!
Our morning was spent discovering animals and natural objects around our fishpond, which naturally led into building chipmunk’s and fairy shelters. We then shifted our focus onto shelters for our school. Teamwork, communication and imagination were a huge part of this project. With the use of natural and man made objects our students created the start of their ultimate tree fort!
We also spent some time playing games that our students created, our kids have some amazing imagination!
Ancient Egypt Mummy Attack
Which consisted of two mummy’s and 5 relics.
Sunflower (gave life)
Painted rock (super strength)
Medallion (unlocks secrets)
Bandana (power to see the unseen)
Block with numbers (code)
The goal of the game is to find all the relics and get them to the safe zone before getting caught by the mummy’s.
Dead ants – All ants have to run to different safe zones without getting caught by the anteater.
A few other games were obstacle course and pass the barrier game.
These are awesome games and definitely will be played again!
To finish off our day we took some time to relax and reflected on our time at Forest School. We shared our favourite memories, skills we have gained and beads we have accomplished. Finishing off with report cards and our Winter semester video, which you can watch below.
Thank-you to all the students and parents for being apart of our FIRST Winter semester. All out students came to school ready for an adventure with lots of layers, snacks and happy faces! We had so much fun this semester and looking forward to Spring. Thank-you for taking this adventure with us!
Next Week – Our first day of Spring! Outdoor Skills and Thrills.
This week at Forest School we wanted to take our kids off the property and explore some of the Bruce Trail that is located right in our own “backyard”. Words could not express how much fun we had today exploring a new part of the Bruce Trail, some of our hiking goals were to discover “Standing Rock” and find the newly renovated “Frank’s Lime Kiln”. Let the adventure begin!
Before we headed out on our journey, we took a slight detour to “Fossil Mountain” to take time to uncover some fossils by peeling apart layers of shale rock. The discoveries made were amazing! Our students got their hands dirty and found different types of rock, fossils, shells, seeds and ice.
Our first trek started at the Nottawasaga Lookout, located just outside of Duntroon. The “Standing Rock” trail is a 1.2 km side loop that encompasses flat and rocky terrain, including caves and crevasses. Bravery and Leadership beads were earned all throughout our afternoon escapade. Our kids ducked, crawled and slid down 5 ice slides, it gave them an easy head start for the rest of our hike! Before we headed back to school, we wanted to let the kids explore a 150-year-old kiln. This kiln had been built in 1860 and was restored in 2015 – the outcome is beautiful. The kids also had a great time learning a little bit about our local pioneer history.
It was great to see our class being so cohesive through out the caves. Our comfort zones were tested, and challenge-by-choice was presented. Moving slowly, and communicating was top notch today! We also worked towards leadership, peer support, spotting, encouraging one another and trust. We are so proud of everyone, you all worked so hard.
Beads and Stickers were abundant today! 8 Bravery Beads, 1Show and Tell Bead, 1 Travel Bead, 1 Leadership Bead, 2 Peer Support, 1 Curiosity Bead and 1 Nature Lover Bead. As usual love, respect and wisdom stickers were earned as well.
Next Week – This will be our last class for the Winter semester, can you believe it!? We will be doing a recap of everything we have learned over the semester, with lots of laughs, fun, and games. We are excited for the spring semester to start and to meet all the new faces!
We had an amazing day at Forest School this week, and with it being March Break we wanted to take advantage of inside and outside activities, even if it was -18 with wind chill!
We touched back to a topic we focused on last week, which was all about our community, and headed back to the Collingwood public library, for some fun and games. Our focused activity was a 9 hole indoor mini putt! Our kids are excellent putters and played an awesome round of golf! Congrats to Hazel for her hole in one! Gotta love the shocked hole in one face! We were all winners in this game!
We also challenged ourselves with a game of eye spy
“ Eye spy a duck, a pigeon, a belle of the ball, 4 rabbits, 9 T’s and a truck comes when you call. A runaway mouse, a marine band and more, three cameras, two monkeys and a pig for money to store”
After finding all the objects we put our name into a draw for a secret prize, were crossing our fingers we get a call!
Spending time reading to each other was a great way to start our afternoon, also a great way to practice our reading skills. Some of the books that we shared were:
“Tyrannosaurus Drip” by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts
“Duck! Rabbit!” By Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld
“Farm Animals Ponies by Heather C. Hudak and
“If you hold a seed” by Elly MacKay.
We hope you get a chance to read them!
We could have spent all day at the library reading books, playing games and hosting puppet shows, but alas, the sun came out and the woods were calling us!
We visited a new place today located in Wasaga Beach, a local Nordic Centre called “Blueberry trails”. After mapping out where we wanted to explore, we headed down the blueberry trail and trekked our way through a forest of deer tracks and cedar trees. We found a great spot to relax, while some students worked on their ‘Fire bead’, others worked on snow art. All students enjoyed hot apple cider and the sunshine.
Thank you to Hazel for bringing in her show and tell items. Coming from Puru – ‘Chestnut’ her lama stuffy made with REAL llama fur, and her Guinea Pig ‘Taco’ made with real alpaca fleece. Needless to say those were the softest stuffies we have had at Forest School!
We hope that everyone has/had a safe, healthy and of course fun March Break! Looking forward to hear about all the adventures our students got up to.
Next Week – We are going to keep it active and full of exploration!
Collingwood is a community that offers activities for every season and for all ages, and at Forest School we tend to stay in the woods and discover nature and explore the unknown, but for this week we wanted to take our day outside of our classroom and discover what is available in our community! We started out the day by discussing what makes a community (teamwork, caring), how it make us feel, (proud, safe and happy) and what does it offer us (health care, good schools and protection). Within Collingwood we have some amazing programs that run all year round, and continue to connect and help each other. With more brainstorming our kids talked about food banks, community gardens, green space, trail systems, humane society and supporting local produce and products.
We also started our own Forest School Food Bank Drive! We encourage all students to bring in food that has a long lasting shelf life. Any donation would be greatly appreciated! What a great way to start our day.
To start our journey we headed to the new Collingwood fire department located at 45 High Street, we had the opportunity to meet the firemen, sit in the trucks, learn all about their everyday equipment and even sprayed the hose! Firemen are a huge part of our community and trained to keep us safe in so many different situations! A huge Thank you to Brian, Cody, Jamie, Matt and Steven for all your help and letting us explore the Fire station!
We also decided to go for a hike, but our hike started at the Museum, and participated in a Story Walk created by the Healthy Kids Community Challenge. We got our local trail map and mapped our hike – right down the Train-Trail. The Story was “Perfect Snow” by Barbra Reid, about two boys – Jim and Scott, who want to make a snowman army and a huge, colossal snow fort. At the end of our story we took time to create our own mini snowman army! Within our hike we also passed more activities that are available to our community – dog park, learning center, police station, parks and gardens. Another Thank you to the Rock Shop for the amazing rocks our students received today!
Some artwork from local students
Our last stop of the day was to visit the Public Library. We checked out all the amazing artwork that our local public schools had been working on. The exhibits were grades 1-3 and from various schools within our community. We also bit into another Healthy Kids Community Challenge and ate some local apples. We celebrated “The Great Big Crunch” to support healthy snacking for our local students.
At the end of our day we found ourselves very grateful that we live in a community that takes care of each other and everything is very accessible. Everything we did today was free, and there is so much more to explore within our community. So grab a map and find yourself outside!
All of our students earned Travel Beads today, along with well deserved Respect, Love and Wisdom stickers!
Next week – Happy March Break to all our students! We will also be running our normal program through out this week. It will also be a surprise day for our kids!
Mother nature is playing games with us, she’s not sure if she want to leave like a lamb or go out like a lion, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the wonderful world of Maple syrup.
This morning was the start of whittling, and our students were super excited about the idea of using knives, and creating something from nothing. But with learning a potentially dangerous skill, we made sure to cover all of our 6 safety guidelines.
Do not share your knife
Safety bubble
Carve away from oneself
Carve for short periods of time
Wear a glove
Carve slowly
This allowed our students to practice their new skill in a safe, and supervised environment. Our contract has some pretty steep repercussions, so our kids made sure their listening ears were turned on, and everyone did an amazing job learning and memorizing all the rules! All of our students went home with all ten fingers and ten toes!
This afternoon we played a student created Macro Model game called Sappy Sappy, a spin off from the classic game Octopus, but with more role-play. The kids were acting as sap running from the crown of the tree to the roots, while the bucket in the middle could tag the sap and turn them into syrup. We also added another twist, the syrup got to move really s-l-o-w around the field to tag the running sap! Needless to say we held amazing games and a teacher even won a round!
After hands on activities about identifying Maple trees (winter and summer) and learning the fundamental steps of how Maple Syrup is made, we strapped on our winter hats and dove even further into learning by hiking out to our sugar bush. Did you know that within our sugar bush we host 83 tapped trees? With today’s unexpected weather, which was one of the coldest days this week, we naturally came across frozen sap within all the buckets, but that didn’t stop us from sneaking a taste.
We even had the chance to explore the sugar shack, and a huge thank you to Neal, one of our teachers who taught us all about the sticky goodness! Getting to look at the evaporator (papa pot, mama pot and baby pot), fire pits, filters, drills, spiles and buckets. Our students became more aware of all the work that goes into this Canadian trademark. Who knew it took 40 gallons of sap to make 1 liter of syrup!
We even had our first musical instrument show and tell today! Thank you Hazel for bringing in your recorder and playing “Mary has a little lamb” for all your fellow classmates. You wouldn’t believe she had been only playing for one week! We are looking forward to hearing more songs in the future!
By the afternoon the kids couldn’t wait any longer to try some syrup, and what better way to do so but with pancakes! Our students build an amazing fire, and with the help of our Chef and his assistant we ate fire-roasted pancakes covered in maple syrup. Our students also took time to practice their whittling, and explored the valley we set up camp in. Full bellies and happy faces at the end of our day – just the way we like it!
Huge congratulations to all the stickers and beads that went out today. 7 Winter Warrior Beads, 1 Cooking Bead, 1 Musical Bead and 2 Fire Beads. Our necklaces are become so colorful!
Next Week – We are going to be diving into Community Projects. We will be getting hands on, and helpful!
Friendly Reminder – With the warming weather we are going back to drop off and pick up at Bygone Days! So lots of extra layers, water and snacks just incase.
This week brought another great day at Forest School, and today was all about Nature Photography and spending time looking at nature from different points of view. We also enjoyed games, our weekly check ins, reflection time and exploration.
A large portion of our day was spent playing around with cameras, and taking pictures of anything that caught our eye! We talked about composition, contrast, different landscapes and how a picture can tell a story. Thought out the day we brought our focus back on our 6 guide lines of picture taking– Getting close, Leading Lines, Rule of thirds, Natural Framing and Points of view.
After practicing with our cameras we ventured out to the Sugar Shack, which led our students into a Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt. Below are two photos our students took, and it was great to see what our kids saw through their point of view. We will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Shout out – We wanted to say HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY to our big man Layne!
You are incredibly creative, curious and very independent young man. You are a joy to have around each week, with all your jokes and stories, and we look forward to many more weeks to come! We hope this year brings more laughs, play and adventure! Happy Birthday!
Along with our photography theme, we also got creative and earned a craft bead today! Our kids got the chance to create a masterpiece of their choosing. They were given natural objects along with string, beads and paint. Dream catchers and magical sticks (painted sticks) were a big hit. The task was to set their art piece in nature and take a picture of it. Great job everyone!
Oh yeah – this happened today! We bumped into Al and he let us taste some of his Pure Canadian Maple Syrup, tapped right from our own backyard! Needless to say it gave the kids extra energy to run back to the Sugar Shack and check on all the Maple trees. Thanks Al!
Next Week – Due to the unseasonal weather temperatures, we will be switching some weeks around. We will learning all about tapping Maple Trees and tapping for Maple Syrup.
Side Note – If your child has a swiss army knife they are welcome to bring it, as we will be introducing whittling around the fire. We promise to send them home will all ten fingers, and toes!
We were expecting bitter cold, blowing wind, lots of snow, and we came incredibly prepared with our helmets, goggles, extra layers, warm socks and positive attitudes! But low and behold, we were graced with a beautiful, sunny day, light snow and lots of powder! Before we went skiing we wanted to take some time and celebrate Valentines Day with encouraging words and showing love for one another.
Our kids received paper with character traits we all possess. Examples were Playful, Funny, Leader and Confident. They had to choose one student for one trait, and by the end our students were pleased to read all the amazing things their peers think! We will keep all the papers on the wall to remind ourselves what we are, and what we could work towards!
Our adventure started with heading up to Scenic Caves Nordic Centre. Our new hard skill was to learn Cross Country Skiing. “When we get to the top of the hill, you never know where it’s going to take you” – Lucy.
Our kids adapted very quickly to skiing and for those who had experience, it was a great opportunity for a student led lesson. Before we headed out onto the trails one of our Painted Turtles – Layne – took charge and taught his fellow classmates the do and don’ts about skiing. We covered falling, getting up, pole etiquette, putting skis on and off, hills (pizza plow and monster step) and of course how to tuck. Despite the information overload, we soaked it all up and headed out onto the trails!
Hills, hills and more hills, our kids couldn’t get enough of them! If you ever find yourself at Scenic Caves and you would like to see where we explored to go Easy Peezy, Lemon Squeezy, Lookout Point and Georgian View Return.
After a well-deserved lunch and hot chocolate break we then explored the Suspension Bridge! We hiked down into a valley where we got out of our comfort zones and earned some bravery beads, and crossed the 420’ bridge which stands 100 feet from the valley floor! A cool fact about the bridge is that it moves with the wind, so when we walked across we made it move even more! Great job to all who crossed it twice, we have some very brave kids in our class!
Congratulations to everyone who earned their beads and stickers today – Bravery, Leadership, Peer support, Respect and Love among many more!
Next Week – It’s a wild world and we plan on exploring as much as we can! We also will be looking into Nature Photography so if your child has a small camera to use for the day, please bring it along!
We don’t think we could have asked for a better winter day to enjoy our first adventure with Ice fishing! There was an abundance of emergent learning, along with some role play learning! This was another week diving into our “knot book” and taking the time to learn some key knots of the day! We tested our ability with the “clinch knot” (which we used later in the day) and the “fisherman’s knot” – single and a double. Our knot knowledge continues to grow each week, and our students have been catching on so quickly! We were all super excited about the idea of catching a fish, what would we do? Eat it or let it go? While we did not catch anything we did learn some valuable lessons. You need to be quiet around your fishing hole, you must have patience; different types of lures attract different fish, and never bet on catching anything! What an amazing day!
We started our day by looking at the appearance of a fish and learning key features. The task was to match up the words to certain body parts and while some were easier than others (eyes, mouth, gills, scales) others were a bit more challenging (dorsal fin, anal fin, percotral fin). Overall our students were able to identify 2- 4 body parts. You should ask your child which body part they remember!
Most of our students had never fished before, and those who had were great leaders! Before heading out onto the “Willow Pond” we made sure we talked about ice safety while creating boundaries.
Our kids were super stoked to immerse themselves in learning to create their own fishing poles (wood string, hook and bait – pepperoni sticks) while talked about lures, weights, hooks, jigging, and casting. Phew!
It’s a good thing we have some pretty strong kids in our class because they were introduced to the “Auger”! Drilling a hole through the ice is hard work, and the kids learned that very quickly! They all had the opportunity to create their own fishing hole, and getting to experience the feeling of breaking through the ice was such a relief. Between our busy day of fishing and drilling we had time to play games “fishy fishy”, make snow angels, huddle around the fire to keep warm, toboggan, soak up the sun, and oh yeah, build an ice rink! We are hoping that it stays cold enough so that we can check on it next week, and have a little fun!
The start of our Ice rink
Just like a lot of animals, fish live a life full of challenges and obstacles everyday and not all make it to adulthood. Our last task of the day was to look at the ‘Life Cycle’ of a fish! But we didn’t just sit down and talk about it, we wanted to become the fish, and for that we have to learn the ‘Forest School’ way! Outside, running, macro-model learning! Our students had to start as eggs and become adults while overcoming fast moving water, turbines, large predators, hurdles and man made objects such as fish ladders. The goal was to get back to the spawning beds to where they were born! Not all fish survived…but that’s the wild!
Great job to all our students today, we are super impressed with all their respect, love, honesty and wisdom stickers! There was also 4 Reflection Beads, 1 Peer Support Bead, 1 Craft Bead, 1 Colouring Bead and 1 Show and Tell Bead handed out, WAY TO GO!!!
Next Week – Field Trip! We will be heading to the top of the Escarpment and visiting Scenic Caves Nordic Centre. Cross Country Skiing is on the menu as well!
Today we welcomed back winter with open arms, excited to spend our whole day exploring the snow. It couldn’t have been a more perfect time because this week, our topic was “Snow”. We also welcomed our guest Tomoko visiting from Barrie, and moving to Japan for 2 years. She participated in our morning routines (check ins, fire starting, smudge circle and shelter building).
She was kind enough to bring us a gift (paint and paint brushes), so we thought we would show her the Forest School way and return the favor with a gift of our own. We made Tomoko her very own medallion to keep as a reminder of her time with us. She received Fire, Friendship, Shelter and Travel Beads for going outside of her comfort zone, learning new skills, and being such great company to us all. Thank you Tomoko for visiting us it was a pleasure to have you!
With the start of our day challenged by puzzles, games, looking at different types of snowflakes (needle, column, prisms, and dendrites), and building inventions, we thought we would begin with a fun “Snow Hypothesis”. Our task started with 3 mason jars and some snow. We packed our jars with snow, and recorded our observations and measurements. The conclusions varied from student to student, but we all agreed that the water level was at least half of the snow we packed.
Jar #1- 6 cups of snow – hard packed to the top
Jar #2 – 3.5 cups of snow – loosely packed to the top
Jar #3 – 2.5 cups of snow – Very loosely packed to the top
We then thought back to a couple of weeks ago when we discussed animal survival, and keeping warm in the winter. The long awaited “Quinzee building” was the perfect activity to get hands on and build shelters similar to those of wild animals in our area. We learned very quickly that many hands make light work, and it takes a lot of muscle power, and endurance to collect all the snow. But that’s what were here for – to learn, be a team, and have fun!
Thank you Luke for helping out your fellow peers and telling us what you know about Quinzee shelters. After diluting food colouring and water our students connected to their inner creativity and made their house a home! So much teamwork went into all of our buildings – 4 in total and all the kids were very proud of their shelter bead.
Taking time in-between building, and decorating our Quinzee shelters, we took advantage of all the fresh powder, and I mean POWDER!…. 3 feet was the deepest we found. Everyone strapped on some snowshoes, grabbed a toboggan and headed to Fossil Mountain to enjoy the beauty of the untouched, fluffy snow. We worked up a sweat hiking, tobogganing, more hiking and even more tobogganing.
Thank you Dax for bringing in your Show and Tell item – home made bouncy ball. Something we will have to try later in the semester.
Big week for stickers and beads 2 Fire Beads, 1 Litter-less lunch Bead, 1 Show and Tell Bead, 7 Shelter Bead, 1 Leadership Bead, 1 Winter Wonderland Bead and our first “Al” Bead for kindness and humility.
Great job to Lucy for starting your first fire today with ONE match!
Next Week – “1 fish 2 fish red fish blue fish” All about fish and maybe if were lucky and have some good bait we can catch a fish!
You could smell the team spirit in the air today! We hosted our first annual “Winter Olympics” and the Weather Gods were on our side bringing us snow! Our students were put to the test today, mentally and physically and came out on top! Before our games started we had to decide which countries our groups were going to represent, Canada or Switzerland! We then proceeded with the games by running around our pond in a relay race style torch run! “Let the games begin”.
Start of our torch run.
Team Switzerland
Team Canada
Our first game of the day was Broom ball! It was a perfect way to introduce teamwork, hand eye coordination and communication to our day. It was a great challenge for all and a great way to see some of our hockey players use their sweet skills. It was a tight match full of suspense, highs and lows, close calls and amazing goals. A well played match by all and to no surprise the score ended up being Canada 2 and Switzerland 1.
After broom ball, we traded our braun for brain power and played an intense game of human size “X’s and O’s”. This game brought challenging times to our younger Painted Turtles, but created some friendly competition and leadership opportunities for the older Snowy Owls to swoop in to assist our wee ones with another Canadian win ! Canada 5 – Switzerland 2.
Our next challenges consisted of Super duper slip and slide – having a run way of 60 feet into a slide of snow. After a couple trial runs and learning that jumping on our knees didn’t get us anywhere we got the hang of it. The longest distance was 6 feet. We also tested our physical ability with long jump and limbo.
Switzerland coming into the lead.
If you have never played Kubb (similar to Viking chess), you need to! It’s an awesome game based on pure luck – so don’t be a sore loser. Our students caught on quick and the game was full of cheers. We had a bunch of lucky students knocking over all the pegs and were left to knock over the King for the win!
Our last challenge of the day was bobsled. We used PVC pipe cut in half and small wooden balls. Our challenge was to work collectively as a team and start the ball high, and aim for the buckets. After a lot of brainstorming, many attempts and new strategies later, we nailed it! We are so proud of everyone working together!
Out of all the games we ended with a TIE!
Our closing ceremony was a great way to end our day with a few last words, and to congratulate our amazing team players. It was wonderful to see how we all worked together, communicated and challenged ourselves by stepping out of comforts zones. Many laughs were had, and memories made during our Winter Games. One of the many highlights of the day: Lara putting the fire out. She miss judged the strength of her arms and tossed water on the fire and half of it hit another student instead of the fire. Somebody’s been eating their veggies!
Congratulations to all the new beads earned Fire and Show and Tell, with an abundance of stickers, 4 layers, love, respect and a huge high five to Lucy for earning the first bravery sticker, for getting out of her comfort zone and participating in our morning smudging ceremony.
Also a big thank you to Kaysa for working on her survival kit and showing the class what she added: a knife, flashlight, duct tape, hand warmers, tin foil, and of course more chocolate.
Reminders** – Students can earn Bingo stickers for doing activities at home! Just share what you did! (Photo evidence doesn’t hurt).
