Love for all weather!

Hi Friends,

What an incredibly creative day we had! We were very curious students today and started looking at different types of creature and plants such as :

  • Red Spotted Purple (Butterfly)
  • Emerald Ash Borer
  • Wooly Bear American Dagger
  • Northern Oriole

We also love rain days because it gives our students the opportunity to dive into their imagination and creative side. We were big builders and inventors – from the tallest tower, pumpkin stoves, painting pictures and 3D replicas.

From carving pumpkins to eating toasted seeds, we even continue to get to know our forest. Finding new mushrooms, Downy Woodpeckers, Salamanders and new plants. We started to focus on the Green trees today, and used our owl eyes to find Spruce, Pine, Hemlock and Cedar. Some were easier finds than others, and we are still on the hunt for the Pine tree!

Until next week

Krista and Travis

  

You can find us in the forest!

Hi Folks,

Thanks for stopping by to read about another great day at Forest School, and we had such a mix of weather from heat, sun, rain, thunderstorm, lighting, chilly wind, hail and then back to sun, our students are getting used to what Fall is all about.

This morning our students warmed up by our new fire pit (Thanks Jennie), and with some familiar games that kept us working up a sweat, we also introduced a new skillful game called scout. This was child invented, and quickly became a favourite of ours that we plan on continuing to play and work towards becoming skillful scouters, hiders and planners.

Today was also the start of our natural first aid kits, and we are lucky enough to have a HUGE patch of Spotted touch-me-nots or Spotted Jewelweed right by our building. Our students harvested some and put the stems in a jar and covered it with oil. Within 4-6 weeks we can then strain the contents and make a salve – this will become a remedy for Poison Ivy. We continued to wonder through the forest and found more gems like our friendly neigbourhood Garter Snake, which welcomed more questions and firsts for some, journals, sit spots, lots of construction with forts and plant identification – with our new I.D cards (Thanks Matt).

A big Thank you to all the students who helped out with making our Pear Sauce, and while having too much fun we ran out of time to cook it, but we are happy to report all pears were still eaten raw, coated in cinnamon, ginger and vanilla – YUM.

Reminders – We are going a Field Trip to Metcalf Rock, and we couldn’t be more exited to show all of our students a new space and a place where they take their families!

Until next week,

Travis and Krista

 

It’s not delivery, it’s…


Everything, absolutely everything, tastes better cooked over a fire.  Period.  End of sentence.

Over the past couple weeks we have put our groups’ culinary skills to work and created some delicious masterpieces.

In the outdoor world, learning to cook over a flame is a key skill to know when venturing into the wilderness.  Moreover, it helps develop many important and highly transferable skills.   It’s a creative outlet that practices reading and basic math (measuring).  It’s following a plan and seeing a project through.  It helps develop patience, improvisation and risk management (knives, fire).  It gives an appreciation for real food and a sense of pride in one’s work.  It’s also a needed life skill and helps build relationships with others.  And most of all, it’s fun!

Most of our meals were made directly on a fire over the past couple weeks, but some were cooked over a camp stove (new skill!) and others were even cooked on a homemade stove made of tin cans.  Here’s what our folks came up with:

Mac and Cheese

Boil water on a camp stove, and then add pasta, let it cook then add the rest! Simple and delicious.

 

 

4 cups of water
Salt
2 cups pasta
3-4 Tablespoons of margarine
1 cup of diced cheese
4 tbsp of powdered milk (or in our case powdered Mac and Cheese)

Soup (“Mac and Everything but Cheese Soup”)

Boil water over fire, chop and add harder veggies first, bouillon, then macaroni. Carve a spoon and stir. Voila!

Half pot of water
2 cups pasta
Veggies – any you want (we used carrots, potatoes, onion)
1 can of Chickpeas
Veggie Bouillon cubes (3-4)

Soup (“Onion and Bean – Don’t forget the bouillon!”)

Cooked on a homemade tin can stove!  Boil water and add everything – stir)

 

 

Half pot of water
2 cups pasta
3 onions
Green Beans
Veggie Bouillon cubes (Don’t forget em like we did!)

Cheddar & chive scones

Mix flour and butter until it resembles bread crumbs.  Add salt and milk, and mix into dough. Fold in chives and cheddar and place in greased cast iron pot, then cover with coals in the fire.

3 cups flour
1 cup buttermilk
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup chives
1/2 cup cheddar
1/4 cup butter

Apple CrisP

Slice and fry apples in a bit of butter.  Add everything else and cook until soft!
½ cup oats
6 tbsp flour
3 tbsp brown sugar and ¼ cup sugar
Some cinnamon
2 tbsp butter
Mac apples

 

Cheers,

The FNS team

Morning Teas and Nature Cafes

Hey Folks,

Aside from our core routines, our days varied a lot this week (as they typically do) so check out the highlights below!

Tuesday

On Tuesday we embraced a beautiful day and celebrated a special birthday.  After our morning circle, check-ins and sit spots, we were off for a lunch out to the wonderful Mysterious Forest.  We learned a new game about fur trading that let our students jump into the roles of Europeans and Indigenous Peoples around the time of contact.  We did this to build off prior knowledge and while the game was incredibly fun, the more important part was the thoughtful and inspiring debrief with our students. (Behind the scenes this is part of our Core Teaching – Heritage Species: Wisdom of the Ancestors).  And of course we had some time for climbing trees, and reading and making up poetry as well.

Wednesday

We started our Halloween with pumpkin carving and cooking the seeds over a fire… they turned out a little burnt, but tasty considering we had no oil!  After our core routines and an impromptu Halloween Costume fashion show, we headed out on a wander.   At a place called “Mushy Beach” (aptly named as we pulled sinking people out) we invented a new game: Crow’s Nest.  It was all about sneaking, moving quietly and “channeling our inner weasel”, as a student put it.  (Behind the the scenes, this targets our indicator of awareness of Quieting the Mind, and core routines related to Animal Form, Questioning and Tracking, and even Sit Spot.) 

Later in the afternoon, we returned to the ruins of our dam from a month ago.  This time it was reinforced with a spillway (pipe) to let out any overflow.  It was awesome to watch ideas come to life and young minds work together to create something epic.  And we got a first hand look at erosion and alluvial fans from the debris of the “river”.  We also had some students make some cool  clay creations.

Thursday

From tea on the fire (and a new tripod cooker built), to human knots, to snakes on the trail and our new fur trading game (see Tuesday for explanation) – the Thursday group was super busy!

One fun and creative moment that unfolded that we want to share with you occurred with our newly updated Mud Kitchen.  It started in the morning with a couple students creating “recipes” for nature soups, drinks and salads and writing them down in their journals.  Fast forward to Free Play in the afternoon and suddenly the whiteboard is out with “Nature Cafe” written across it.  Before long, there are more cooks, servers and patrons of the restaurant and inevitably a currency system.  And eventually pretty much the entire group is involved.  It was magical! (Behind the scenes: this is a great example of symbolic and socio-dramatic play!)

Further, and what really made us as educators so proud, was that the “ingredients” for the recipes were specific plants that we have learned to identify over the last few years.  And each recipe was pretty complex, requiring at least 8 different plants!

Friday

We started with tea over the fire again (catnip and cedar) and got ready for a wet and cool day!  If the weather was an issue, the kids didn’t let on as they embraced the day.  We headed out on an adventure that led us to Mysterious Forest.  We played a huge game of Sardines where one person hides and the others hide alongside that person when they find them.  Playing in such a big space that is so well treed gives us the sense of being lost or at least being away from others and alone. (Behind the scenes: this one of our pillars of risky play)

We made our way back, pretty wet and ready for a warm-up and lunch.  After lunch we read a Nootka legend from the Pacific Northwest called Octopus and Raven.   The students then created or interpreted their own legends in dramatic form.  They were inspiring tales! (Behind the scenes: Storytelling is one of our fundamental Core Routines)

If you’ve read all this (thanks!), you can see we had a pretty fun week.  Every group we have is so different and we are so thankful to have the space and freedom to follow the interests of our kids – it really makes for unique days.  A big thanks to our student’s parents and guardians for knowing the value in this!

We are CAVING next week for our Painted Turtles, Snowy Owls and Blue Herons!  Please dress to get wet and muddy.

Cheers,

Matt, Aislinn, Michelle and Krista

Pics:

  

Climbing and Eating, among other things…

Hey Folks,

It’s been awhile since our last post and we’ve been up to so many adventures!  It’s hard to sum up (and remember everything – we have go to keep up on this blog!).  From expanding our knowledge on wild edibles, hiking new trails and rock climbing, we have been super busy!

All of our older classes have now had the chance to visit one of our favourite places – Metcalfe Rock.  This gem, located in the Kolopore Uplands, is a magical place to explore, play and uncover new things.   We certainly pushed our limits rock climbing up the Escarpment – and many of us for the very first time.  We are so proud of our students for stepping beyond their comfort zones and trying something new!

Our students are also getting really good at identifying wild edible plants.  We have had some more real tasty stir fries (including our favourite – leek and asparagus!) and garlic mustard pesto sauces.  We were even able to find some morels!

As the spring unfolds we also see our pond coming alive, too.  And with the warm weather we’ve caught many frogs and turtles, and other little critters.  It’s been cool catching dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, then connecting with them again as they are out flying around now, eating those unwanted bugs.  We are also watching tadpoles grow bigger, birds make nests and have their babies, and bigger mammals (like our neighbour the groundhog) go about their day.  It’s this repetitive connection with place that is so important – and so interesting! It’s allowed us the opportunity to see and feel connected to the changes this spring.  It’s been quite a treat to see and engage with all of this awesome creation and we know there is more to come!

Thanks for reading!

Matt and Krista

Some Pics:

 

“Sap”cicles and other sweet adventures

Happy Spring Everyone, and welcome back (or for the first time!) to Forest and Nature School.  We had a great week at Bygone Days exploring our property and reaping some of nature’s sweet benefits!

All week long our main focus was Maple Syrup leaving students with first-hand experience and a better understanding of the science behind this Canadian staple, the parts of the process and set-up and some students now even know  how to identify Maple Trees that are good for tapping by their leaves (round edges).  And while our goal was to explore the Sugar Shack area, emergent interests took us in all sorts of directions!

After initial free-play and our core routines (smudge and check-ins), groups headed out on their adventure to Maple Forest.  All sort of routes were taken and sidetracks made and new things discovered.  Throughout the week students discovered along the way the hollow sound of pebbles skipping on ice, 4 different sets of tracks within ten steps, fish from the pond, butterfly sanctuaries (milkweed), our nature playground and much more.

And as student-led learning often goes, we also saw:

Sagas unfold as students tried to tackle Fossil Mountain;
Pulley systems set up to bring up rocks;
Hotels open in the big forest trees;
Games of camouflage and “person”hunt;
Whole systems of trade and barter;
Epic Spring snow slides;
The rediscovery of our last remaining snow cave from the Winter Session;
Millions of years old fossils;

And so much more!

To top it all off, groups were treated to a Maple Syrup treat over the fire to end the day and compare the sweetness of the syrup to that of the sap.  Some groups had pancakes, some “scramcakes” (scrambled pancakes) and others Maple Toffee on snow.

Next Week:
A reminder that there is NO SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, enjoy the Holiday!
For everyone else, we are diving into outdoor skills.  For our full schedule, click here.

Thanks!

The Forest School Team

More Pics:

 

Stone Soup and Bike Smoothies

Hey Everyone,

With the temperatures finally starting to settle down (well, except for Tuesday) it’s really starting to finally feel like Fall.  We celebrated this week with our annual Fall Harvest, with a big focus on local food.

After spending time in our sit spots, we set out to explore our site early in the morning to harvest some sweet snacks from all over the land.  We are lucky enough to have pear and apple trees scattered throughout our property which made for a great smoothie to add to our lunch.  The cool thing about our smoothies? Totally made with the power of pedaling! Students jumped on the smoothie bike and each took turns blending not only our local fruit, but all sorts of other wild edibles we could find – red clover, chicory, mint and more.  Oh! Of course there was also our favourite addition across the board: the wild grapes that turned our smoothie a bit sour and really purple!

After some afternoon unstructured play which took all sorts of forms – from baseball to slacklining, dragon tails to loose parts, music to obstacle courses, (it truly is wonderful watching the ideas and imaginations unfold!) – we did a storybook walk to Stone Soup by J.J. Muth.  It’s a wonderful story – read it here if you’d like!  This story inspired us to create our soup.  We found stones, added salt, chopped and added veggies and had a communal meal.  Everyone played a role and a special thanks to all those brought in a garden veggie.

Depending on where interests went, we also had students dehydrating pears and apples, creating solar ovens to bake cinnamon apples and pears, and we even preserved some pears on Friday!

All in all, a yummy week.

An incredibly big thanks to Healthy Kids Community Challenge for lending us their Smoothie bike and Story Walk!  They’ve got so many cool things happening and are making a huge difference in our community! Check them out here.

Next Week:
Field Trip: Disc Golf for the older students, Pond Study for the younger ones.

Cheers,

The Forest School Team

More pics:

 

And they say kids don’t like vegetables…

Hey All,

What an amazing week we had exploring !  The students had the opportunity to spend time looking at the forest through a different lens – and a delicious lens at that! Our energy this week focused around the question: What can we eat??? We brought in Brian, a local wild edible and plant ID expert, to help us uncover the treasures that were literally growing right in front of us!

Our morning objective was to get out and ID/harvest as many different types of edible plants as possible.  And over three days, we grew quite the impressive list:

Dandelion (or as Thursday group came to learn the “Pusteblumen” in German)
Wild Carrots
Grape Tendrils (or the “arms” of the grape – sourly delicious)
Cattails
Clover (but not too much!)
Thistle!
Bladder Campion
Daisy
Bass Wood
Cedar
Catnip
Pineapple Weed
Leeks
Burdock
Curly Dock
Strawberries
Pepper Grass
(GIANT) Asparagus
..and much more!

Medicinal:
Plantain – chew it up and put in on cuts, stings and bites
Yarrow – helps stop bleeding (and nose bleeds!)
Willow – like Tylenol for toothaches or cankers

We spent the afternoon by the lake, where epic tunnels were dug,  gardens were built, clay factories were opened and overall people were just covered in mud – including a sweet puppy visitor on Thursday. We wrapped up our day by gathering around the fire, where we cooked up some delicious wild veggie stir-fries, with a salad as an appetizer, and shared some steeped loose leaf teas from foraged greens and roots. Things taste so much better when you collect them yourself!

Congratulation Bead Recipients:
A whole bunch of Nature Lovers, 2 Al’s Beads and 1 Cooking Bead!

A BIG thanks to Brian!  He brought an enormous amount of knowledge and great energy to the groups, and made the learning so accessible and inspiring for the kids.  (He does edible nature walks as part of his job, if you are interested in doing one or you’d like to get in touch with him, send us an email – it’s totally worth it!)

Next week:
We are paddling!!! Please remember bathing suits and a towel.  We’ll have everything else, but if you want you can BYO-PFD.  (and water shoes are good choice!).

Reminder: Days are getting HOT! Please remember to bring a water bottle and a hat to protect from the sun.  Sunglasses is a good idea, too.

We’ll leave you with a quote from one of our student’s:

“It’s so strange. It’s like I see the world and plants differently now.”

Happy Harvesting,

Krista, Matt and Kim

Good-bye Winter, Hello Spring

Hey Friends!

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.

Until next week!!

Krista and Neal

Our Video


  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Celebrate Good Times

Hey Everyone!

We celebrated the end of our semester with a little “spring cleaning” this week and spent some time outfitting our sit spots, exploring  the “concrete factory” and updating the amenities at our camp sites. Naturally, students incorporated some slack lining and tree climbing too!

Over both days, it was awesome to watch creativity bloom.  Tuesday we visited an area of our property known as the concrete factory – essentially a muddy and sandy area with a small amount of running groundwater.  It was soon discovered that this mix turned into “quicksand” and suddenly students were stuck!! After a rescue mission, it was decided we should barricade this area off to warn other students, so we quickly made a fence from the down branches and grass (for cord) in the area.

While this was going on, other students were searching, opening and discovering hundreds of fossils.  Everyone was on the hunt for Trilobytes and worked together to pry the rocks open at their “excavating store”.  Even more students were damming up the flowing river and adding pipes and tunnels to direct it.  It sure was a busy morning!

On Wednesday, we shifted focus to our campsite and soon enough a market was open, trading in bricks, tree bows, sticks and more.  Eventually we had an entirely new shelter built, a (well-supervised!) knife throwing pit using homemade throwing knives one of our students created from old saw blades, and entirely new sit spots for some Snowy Owls.

After lunch on both days, we played our favourite game – Survival.  Students became part of the food chain and had to survive for 30 minutes finding food, shelter and water.  We are happy to report that everyone from both days survived – and we’ve never seen a more friendly and cooperative carnivore!

To finish off the day we had a bonfire and cooked some bannock.  We shared our favourite memories from the Winter and appreciations for each other.   Afterwards, we gave out report cards and watched our Forest School Winter Movies (which you can see below).

Lastly, a big appreciation for you –  the parents!!  Winter can be a tough time of year, but with your dedication, commitment and awesome layering work, we had a really successful semester!  Thanks for taking part in this journey with us.

Next Week:
Spring Semester begins – Outdoor Skills and Thrills!

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

Videos:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

More Pictures: