We had an amazing dose of vitamin D while enjoying the summer weather today, and all the heat and humidity didn’t slow our kids down one bit! This week we touched on the topic of bee’s, while still enjoying our regular routines. We started our day with a student led game “Bee-ing Human” similar to tag, but this got us working up such sweat that we had to cool down with blowing bubbles! And who doesn’t love bubbles! While sitting in on our check in’s, the question “If you had a superpower that could help change the world, what would it be?” This got our kids thinking all about bad guys, controlling the weather and the ability to help end world hunger with ‘Mother Nature’ capabilities.
While our Painted Turtles were working on their sit spots, some of them decided to get their hands dirty and make mud pies and cakes. They even took the time to decorate them with dandelion’s, but for some reason, no one seemed too interested in tasting it.
Our morning discussions brought us to our first lesson about bee’s. We buzzed over to our journals and started writing and drawing all the information we knew, and our students know a lot! We even looked at the ‘Honey Bee’ anatomy. Last Spring, we were lucky enough to find an abandoned bee’s nest, and had the chance to dry it out and were able to feel the outside (which feels like really thin paper) and the honey comb inside. Getting up close to the nest really put things into perspective for our students. After our lesson it naturally led into our bee themed game! Called “Get to the Honey” this game included 2 Bee guards, 2 Bee forgers, 1 Queen Bee, and 2 Bears! The goal was for the bears to find the hive and get all that honey, but wait! You don’t want to get caught by the guards (their stingers really hurt). While the guards are protecting their home, the forgers are buzzing around trying to find nectar and pollen. Phew! Our students quickly discovered there is never any down time for a bee whether it’s, foraging, protecting, feeding the larva, or building upon the hive. The truly discovered the meaning behind the phrase “you’re a busy bee”.
With a high of 32 degrees our afternoon was fairly relaxed. Between frog hunting (6 in total and a bullfrog which got away!), making lip chap (which was super easy and only consisted of bee’s wax, coconut oil and peppermint oil) we enjoyed finishing off our day with a well deserved river dunk.
Thank you to Emily and Taven for your Show and Share, as well to all of our students who showed respect and love for one another! Our day was full of recognition! 4 littler less lunch beads, 1 bravery bead, 1 storytelling bead, 2 fire beads and 1 bingo bead! We are even getting super close to winning some prizes for our stickers! Keep being awesome Painted Turtles and Snowy Owls!
This week at Forest School was dedicated to continuing our education about our feathred little friends, Birds! With our in-class lessons and hands on games, we packed our day full of physical activity. This morning we put our students to the test, and worked together to start a fire without a match! Thanks Aaron for sharing your flint and steel, and great job to Jack for starting it, we even timed it at 7 minutes and 49 seconds. Between our fire starting and teaching each other how to fish, we discovered our second Beaver! We even found 3 bird nests with mommy protecting her eggs, which fit our curriculum perfectly. Check out our epic day!
Our day was too beautiful to be inside, so we only spent one lesson indoors. There was a big discussion about what makes a bird, a bird! Is it their feathers, wings, beak, hollow bones or just their great personality? Either way birds are pretty cool animals and getting the chance to not just discuss them, but feel their feathers, and get up close an personal with their nests is a great opportunity to invoke more curiosity. While we spent some time on our journals, we also took a moment to create our “Forest School Binoculars” out of toilet paper rolls. Through out our day we saw many Canadian Geese, Robins, Chickadee’s and Turkey Vultures.
Our students dove right into their role of Canadian Geese for the game “Canadian Geese Migration” this morning. Our little birds had to migrate down South safely, and be aware of all the risks associated with migration. Our flock of birds had to fly from each resting stop, making their way through beautiful landscapes full of clean water and food , natural disasters, oil spills and landfills and a SURPRISE from the hunters! Our students discovered some of the challenges these birds face on a daily basis, and that nature isn’t nice all the time. It was sad to say not all Canadian Geese survived, with starting with 9, and ended up with 2!
This afternoon we let our creativity take over, and made natural bird feeders with peanut butter, honey, bird seed, pine cones and sticks. Some of our students even made “human-feeders” with bracelets and necklaces made from Cheerios and pipe cleaners which led us into our bird feeder game, and then into the ultimate “Chickadee Vs Blue Jays”. It’s not always easy being a bird, our little Chickadee’s had to fly to the bird feeders and take their food back to their nests, but WAIT! Those pesky Blue Jays are trying to steal food from the Chickadee’s nest! All of our little birds worked so hard to fill their nest with food, but the Blue Jays won the battle, flying away with 25 pieces of food. Good news is all birds went home with some food in their nests!
Today there was an abundance of Love, Wisdom and Respect stickers earned! We are getting close to some prizes and Bingo beads! Thank you to Izzy for bringing in your Whale book, it was super awesome to look at all those pictures, Congrats on the Show and Tell Bead!
Next Week – We will be working on some new, and unfinished projects!
This week Forest School brought us another day packed full of learning, exploration and discovery. When our students arrived this morning, we were shocked to discover the difference in the landscape on our property from last week. It was amazing to see how high the Beaver River rose, but with the river taking away some of hiking paths, it gave us an opportunity to explore new areas.
Our topic this week was all about our local animals, we spent our morning playing games like “Ocelot tag” which was led by Emily, one of our fellow students. Some highlights of the day were making nests, continuing building our shelters and working towards starting fires without matches. We also brought out our collection of animal prints, and took time to learn 5 new footprints to add to our journals, as well as playing a footprint matching game to test our knowledge! Our big winner was Taven for getting 6 out of 9 correct.
While we explored the great outdoors, we tried to live like animals. Imagination play, and working on our imitation animal calls provided great opportunities for our students to have a good laugh. Some of us pretended to be beavers, dinosaurs, wolves, and sloths – and some even hugged trees! Our 3 epic games of “camouflage” was a great way to mimic animals hiding from their predator, and an awesome segway into our main lesson of learning, and teaching their fellow peers something new about their favorite animal. We dove right into our animal books, and found all we could about our furry, and not so furry little friends. Some of the animals we learned about were the Pig, Fox, Armadillo, Yellow Jacket, Wolf, Chickadee, Red headed Woodpecker and Coyote. Great job everyone for all your efforts in researching the animals you wanted to learn more about!
Our last fun activity of the day, in light of the holiday fast approaching, was to have an Easter egg Hunt! All were found except 2! Maybe well find them next week as a little treat!
We would like to send out a BIG thank-you for all the show and tells today – 4 in total! We had a cool branding piece brought in on some wood, wolf information books, flint & steel, and a super neat rock with crystals inside called a geode! We are SUPER lucky that we all love to share, and teach each other new things! Watching our students be so intrigued by the information each individual possesses is incredible! Each, and every one of our amazing Forest School kids teaches us something valuable, and interesting each day!
This week was full of support! 8 Respect and Love stickers, 5 wisdom stickers, along with 1 peer support bead.
Next week – We will going off property to explore more of the Bruce Trail! Get ready for some hiking!
Firstly, a BIG welcome to our new students and their families this semester – Forest School is booming and we are so happy to have a growing community. Also, a BIG welcome back to our students from the Fall, and of course our courageous Winter semester crew! We’re in for a good season this Spring.
We started off our days learning how to set up tents (which were especially needed on Tues and Thurs with the rainy weather!) then continued like most days at Forest School – Free Play, Smudge and Check-ins. Afterwards we ventured off for an extended amount of time in our Sit Spots (if you don’t know what this is yet, follow this link to our Core Routines page). New students were on the hunt for a space to call their own and become stewards of for the next few months, while returning students added their personal touches to theirs: a new balance beam in one, a shelter in another, a wall in one more – anything to make it their own… even some fairy gardens! The students could’ve (and would’ve!) spent all day there.
Hanging out in our sit spots
Over the past few weeks, the classes have really been putting in time at our fire pit. We now have an incredible tree fort, a natural shelter, a storefront and a revitalized fire ring. As our goal this week was to learn new outdoor skills, what better place to spend most of the day? Our goal? To create a fire without a match or lighter.
On Tuesday, after a Fire Safety lesson, students eagerly got busy with different jobs – collecting wood, getting the fire ready, fetching water, making “nests” and setting up our ignition station. Students then jumped at the chance to try out our magnesium and steel. With charcloth in place and a nest nearby, we were ready to go. And we did it!!! Our very first “fire keeper” is a long-time Painted Turtle, the very first student in FS Forest School History to make a fire without a match… and he did it in the rain!
Magnesium and steel with charcloth
Wednesday was much the same, though we had much better weather and even more students were able to get their nests blazing without a match. Alas, we tried our best with the Bow Drill and came up just shy – at least we have a new goal for later in the spring (flint and steel proved quite difficult as well, but just another thing to look forward to!).
Working on our Bow Drill skills
The afternoon was spent in different ways on these two days. After exploratory play time, most student wanted to spend more time in their sit spots, or showing them off to others. We found out that tree sap (this was from a pine) can act like a torch and burn really well and long on the end of a stick. We also opened up the knife throwing pit on Wednesday for the Snowy Owls, which was a ton of (highly supervised!) fun. To finish off the day, the classes learned about the key components of a camp stove, how it’s put together and how to use it. And we made some cider/tea.
Our knife throwing pit
Thursday saw some of the craziest weather to date at Forest School. This put a kink in our fire plans, but not in our spirits! After an epic hike to Maple Forest, with some inevitable stops along the way (including finding 5 FROGS!), we were soaked and muddy! The students did a great job at keeping warm and layering up, so we made a fire, had some tea and roasted some marshmallows to celebrate our resilience. What unreal winter-like weather, and a great reminder that “April Showers” can be brutal – please remember to send extra clothes with you child or you can leave a labelled set at the school.
2 of the bigger frogs we found
The classes also brainstormed, voted on and came up with 3 new beads (one per class). Allow us to introduce the student-created:
Sit Spot Bead – earned by taking good care of your sit spot, spending quiet time reflecting in it, doing assigned tasks and making it your own. Fisherperson Bead – earned by demonstrating new knowledge with fishing… bonus if you catch a fish. Explorer Bead – earned by exploring somewhere new and stepping outside of your comfort zone.
And by popular demand from all three classes: Fire Keeper – creating and maintaining a fire without a match or lighter. (We have a few to give out next week!)
We will send home a fully updated bead list next week. Congrats to our bead recipients this week! 2 Fire beads, 1 teaching bead for a great lesson on Great White Sharks, and 1 Show and Tell bead.
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!
In the spirit of March Break we decided to skip out on school this week and head off to Wasaga Beach to discover new parts of our community. We started our adventure at the Nordic Centre in hopes of exploring some new trail systems and after a quick tree ID tag game we were off!
While on the hike, Tuesday’s group made an unanticipated discovery – a HUGE amount of ice among the trees and under the snow from the previous melt. They spent a good chunk of time clearing it off (some students even became official “Zambonis”), creating their own bases and then connecting this intricate network of rooms together. During a debrief/apple cider break, we found out that teamwork and cooperation were the biggest factors in creating this enormous project. (Ahh, emergent learning :)!)
Our Zamboni!
Wednesday we had a chance to swing by the Library before heading to Wasaga to check out some of the cool activities they had going on during March Break and buy some books for our Little Free Library. After we arrived at the Nordic Centre though, imaginations took over and it seemed that as soon as we began our hike we had already stopped to investigate something further. This time instead of ice, it was a giant tree that had fallen over with an exposed root system over 6 ft high. The students quickly got to work on their “archaeological” dig with “hammers” in hand, and sorted out different roles for everyone as they uncovered what lay beneath. We as teachers sat back and watched this magic happen, and eventually this led to a discussion around soil types (with a first hand look at how sandy the soil is in Wasaga) and new life from old. (Again, a big shout out to emergent learning!).
Our “archeological” dig
After a picnic lunch, we played a quick game of Eagle’s Eye and then headed off to the Wasaga Beach Free Spirit site, aka the soon-to-be home of our Little Free Library! While there, we made a a fire together, told stories and ate marshmallows – or rather marsh-ball-ows on Tuesday as they had all melted together in the bag. We took a quick peak at the Nottawasaga river in anticipation of paddling it in the spring, and then had to head back to the school house. Time flies when you are having fun!
A big thanks to those who brought in some books for our Little Free Library project! It’s almost full now!
Next Week:
We have another field trip! We’ll be heading to Singhampton to check out the cave systems there.
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!
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.
With the temperatures rising, and the snow disappearing, our Winter semester is slowly melting away. The good news? Maple sap is-a-flowin’.
“Maple Forest”
We started our day off with a Macro Model we created calledSappy, Sappy. In this activity, students slid into the roles of sap collection in an epic sap flow vs spiles and buckets challenge. It’s an educational take on a classic game (Octopus) that students would have played all day if they could have! And a great way to dive into our Maple Syrup day.
After learning about the science behind sap flow, we wasted no time in rushing out to our sugar bush (aptly named Maple Forest) to meet up with our Maple Master “Uncle” Al, who taught us about all the steps in making syrup. The students eagerly navigated the 83 tapped trees, tasted the sap and explored the sugar shack to watch the boiling process in action. They even tasted Maple Syrup fresh from the tap.
Looking for sap!
We were able to sneak in a little math today as the students recorded findings about a tree of their choosing. They took out their yarn to measure the circumference of the tree and filled their measuring cups to discover how much sap their tree had yielded. After a tour and presentation of everyone’s trees, students made the connection of size of tree (and number of buckets!) to volume output (though we had a HUGE rogue tree that yielded basically no sap; which led to some interesting theories…). We also worked on ratios — 40:1 for Sap to Syrup (though Al likes his even sweeter and does 50:1). We helped collect wood for Al to keep the fires going then headed back to the school house for lunch.
Measuring Circumference
After some time for exploratory play (and inevitably more rounds of Sappy, Sappy), students created a Mokuk (a birch bark bucket) to mimic those historically used by some Indigenous people to collect sap. We also created some photo frames for our Class Photos taken last week.
Finally, it was our turn to indulge. We set out to our camp pit, built a fire (despite the rain) and cooked up some pancakes. And of course… we smothered them in Maple Syrup from our very own Sugar Bush!
Next Week:
Community Projects! We’ll be getting helpful and creative. If your child has a project they’d like to work on, please encourage them to bring it in to share.
With the nice weather, we are going to do drop-off and pick-up at Bygone Days. We’ll be sure to send out an email reminder.
Congrats to our Bead recipients – Everyone received their Winter Warrior bead for tackling Winter head on over the past couple months. We also gave out some cooking beads, litterless lunch beads and bingo beads! Congrats everyone!
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!
