Category Archives: Community

Welcome March Break

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Hey Folks!

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!

Until Next week!

Krista and Neal

Check out our day!

    

    

    

                          

A walk through our community

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Hi Folks!

Friendship Gardens

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!

Until next week!

Krista and Neal

  

  

      

                                        

Reflections of Our Community

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Hey Everyone,

This week at Forest School we took a look at Community Building.  We started off with some team-building games then brainstormed all sorts of ideas about what is community and what makes a community.  There were a lot of interesting insights, from thoughts about our Forest School community, to our Collingwood (and beyond) community and even a discussion around our global community.  The students starting rhyming off cool initiatives that are happening here – community gardens, food banks, adopt-a-highway, trail-systems and green spaces, Coldest Night of the Year, and much more – so we decided to explore!

“Ants” on a log – teambuilding

Lava Pit – teambuilding

We got out our map of the city and the students found the best route to some key places to check out in our town.   We went on a tour of Little Free Libraries – if you’ve never heard of this it’s worth checking out the website here.  It’s simple: take a book and leave book!  There are at least 3 of them in Collingwood – one that we didn’t even know about until students told us about it and we checked it out.

Little Free Library at Kinsmen Park

Little Free Library on Bush St.

With the Tuesday group, we went on a hike afterwards,  but not just any old hike.  This was a Story Walk that began at the Collingwood Museum.  Every few hundred meters was another page to read, until we finished the book. This is another thoughtful initiative executed by Healthy Kids Challenge Collingwood.

Story Walk

With the Wednesday group, we decided to check out the community gardens and then head to a local green space to play around and reflect on the benefits of having parks in the community.

Free Spirit Gardens Community Garden

Forest inspired Playground

After being inspired by these projects, we returned back to the School.  After a quick lunch, we jumped into our own projects.  Some students made community hammocks for our school and mittens with the sewing machine, and others worked hard on developing our very own Little Free Library with reclaimed materials.  Others designed their own parks or wrote their very own stories to put in the Library or eventually create their own Story Hike – we had a lot of options for our projects.  And on Wednesday, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get out the kite kits and take advantage of the wind.  Since the kites didn’t do so well, plastic bags became the kite of choice, and we even had a giant tarp up it the air.  It was a creative and inspiring day to say the very least.

Making a hammock!

Both groups combined to start our own LFL from reclaimed materials

Writing a story for our LFL or our own Story Walk

Congrats to our bead recipients:  1 Show and Tell Bead and Winter Warriors.

Next Week:
We are running during March Break and since we have already done a Maple Syrup day, our programming is still TBD – you can bet we’ll be outside though.

If you have any old books you’d like to donate to our Little Free Library, that would be greatly appreciated! Any genre and for any age. Thanks!

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

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