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!