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).
Wow! What a wonderful day for our Olympics. Though we lacked the obvious winter appeal, we made up for it in high-energy games, creative play and an incredible spirit of the games! Upon arriving at Bygone Days, students were divided and asked to choose (or create) a country (Canada vs Nepal; Greece vs The Bernese Mountain Dogs) for the Winter Olympic Games. Our Olympians relayed the torch around the pond, lit the fire, swore an Olympian Oath with a focus on participation and having fun, belted out their cheers and set off for our Olympic Games. The first match was an epic sport that was new to many students… BROOM BALL! What a fun way to transfer familiar skills and technique to a new invasion game activity! This game was a highlight for many of our students, along with the shootout afterwards for the Tuesday crew and a student-inspired javelin toss for Wednesday’s.
Javelin Toss
Ice-broom-bowling
Broom Ball
After Broom Ball, the Olympians had the opportunity for another team challenge: BOBSLEDDING! Students were tasked with the challenge of working together to move marbles from one location to another, using their bobsled (a half-piece of PVC). This activity appears to be simple, however as we discovered, there are so many factors that contributed to a successful experience. It was an incredible tool to debrief group dynamics and to emphasize the importance of each member’s action on the team. It was powerful to hear the individual groups brainstorm solutions, communicate effectively and listen to their peers, repair mini-ruptures that happen during high-stress situations, and ultimately work together to transport as many marbles down their shoot as possible! What a great way to energize the group!
Working together on the “Bobsled”
Our next activity included more target practice for the Olympians. Students threw disc’s to hit various hoops, earning points depending on distance or angle. This activity helped with focus, allowed for team camaraderie and brought the competition of the games even closer together, for both days!
For our final challenge, Tuesday’s group chose to play an ultimate match of Kubb (essentially Viking Chess) to decipher the winning team. It was here that Canada was able to make a 2 point comeback on Nepal, ending Tuesday’s Winter Olympic Games in a TIE! Now, Wednesday’s group opted for an epic game of Capture the Flag, where, believe it or not, none of the flags could be found! This too ended Wednesday’s Winter Olympic Game in a TIE! (We swear we aren’t just giving out participation awards, haha!)
Kubb
It was a really fun day today. It was quite nice to see the difference between the groups. Tuesday’s students were really keen to imagine and create new structures with the PVC pipes and create giant slides as a group. Wednesday students were eager to build the fire, make their own tea and give offerings to the trees, or spend some quiet time working away at their spoons. A lot of new crafts came out of this week – some DIY axes, incredible home-made snowshoes, and spoons. Our Show and Tell experience was awesome! Thanks for working on these beads at home and sharing your experiences with us.
We had quite a few new bead recipients this week, including 6 Show and Tell Beads, 2 “Al’s” Bead for kindness, and even a Bingo Bead already! We also gave out a well-earned Teaching bead for some awesome yoga lessons to start and end our day. A big congratulations to our students for working so hard!
FYI: If you were curious if our amphibians survived their week-long hibernation… they did!
If you haven’t received our newly accommodated Winter Schedule, be sure to check out our website. Next week, we will be exploring The Science of Snow! Looking forward to seeing you!
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!
Neal found a full fire extinguisher…or at least the kids thought it was full…it was empty, but the reactions were priceless!
We would like to welcome back all of our students to Free Spirit Forest School for the winter semester and we are happy to introduce one of our newest teachers; Neal!
This week was all about getting comfortable with outside travel. We took time to set our intentions for Forest School meaning, how we treat fellow classmates and things we want to let go of either personally or physically.
The lack of snow didn’t slow us down. We kept positive and made the best of our icy, winter wonderland! We are looking forward to the rest of our semester and all the adventure it will bring us through exploration and curiosity. The sky is the limit!
Forest School 2017 Class Photo
We welcome our new class of 2017! They are strong, hilarious, curious and a genuinely happy group of kids that we are excited to spend every Thursday with!
“The Earth Ship” is now our drop off and pick up location so we decided to start our day with a quick exploration around our new grounds. We found a wonderful moment when our students built their very first firepit. Many hands helped with this project and we couldn’t have had a better turn out! Through communication, working together and hard work our students built their first project together. Great job guys and gals!
One of our tasks of the day was to create our “Forest School Agreement” between students and teachers. It was wonderful to see all students participating in delivering what they want to get out of Forest School. We discussed respect (personal, other students boundries and our surroundings), listening (the difference between hearing and listening), communications and many many more. Check out what the kids came up with!
Our last adventure of the day was to gain the skills and knowledge to hunt down objects to create their own “emergency” snowshoes. We cut sticks, braided willow twigs, used ripped up t-shirts and twine. All of our students were able to create snowshoes that stayed afloat and held their body weight. We are super proud of all the hard work that went into their shoes and are excited to use them in further activities.
Dax showing off his “A” frame snowshoes
Congratulations to all our students who received their first of many respect stickers. Next week we are looking forward to giving away some beads! Keep up the good work everybody!
Next Week – Is all about wilderness survival! We will be looking at Food, Shelter and Fire…..we wonder what the kids think they will need to survive?
On our last day of Forest School this year, the students’ skills were put to the test with an Amazing Race. Just like in the show, the classes had to work their way through Team Challenges, Road Blocks (completed by one person) and Detours (choice between 2 activities) while earning materials (tinder, kindling, a pot, etc) along the way for their final challenge of the day.
The Amazing Race encompassed almost everything we’ve covered this semester. Various challenges, like the tarp flip, human knot and blindfolded hikes, showed us just how well these groups worked together as teams. The group dynamic here was quite powerful! Other activities challenged hard skills (knots, compass and GPS use, and fire building) while knowledge tests showed us just how much they’ve learned and retained this year. We even called on skills we haven’t learned here, like clues being translated from French!
No matter the challenge, they rose to it. Throw in some snowshoeing, tobogganing, “skating” on the pond, and cedar tea made over the fire (the Final Challenge) and we’ll call it a day well spent outside.
In the spirit of the day, we spent a good chunk of it debriefing the year and looking forward to the next aspects of Forest School. Students were reflective when filling out their report cards and gathered all their stuff (sticker boards, journals and medallions) to take home. As many of you know, we wrapped the day up with a gathering at the Earthship for some drinks and a movie (see above for the movie!)
A big, big thanks to you, the parents, for believing in what we are doing and trusting in us to accomplish this. We couldn’t do it without your constant support. It’s been a real pleasure teaching, learning and growing with your kids. We are loving the sense of community that is developing with this program and are eager to keep it going! See you in the New Year!
Next year:
-If your child or children are returning, please send them back with their journals and medallions so they can continue collecting new beads.
-While we will still be using the property at Bygone Days, we are excited to be calling the Earthship our home for the Winter Semester! (How incredible is it that our classroom is in an Earthship?!) Drop off and pick-up will be there (633 Sixth St) at the same times.
– Please note that we’ve put up a tentative schedule for the Winter Semester on our calendar.
Enjoy the Winter break! Have a happy and healthy holiday and Merry, Merry Christmas!
Our first semester of Forest School ended just the way it started, AMAZING. Our jam packed day consisted of our students using the skills, and knowledge they have obtained here at Forest School. “The Amazing Winter Race” started with us using a map to navigate ourselves to 7 different checkpoints, which consisted of various team-building activities, a crazy spider web, snow lava rock wall, and more mapping with our “Santa candy cane hunt”. We spent so much time today talking about our favourite memories, and what we are excitied about for the Spring.
This morning brought us back to Animal tracking week! Aaron had a keen eye with finding these bunny tracks right beside the Greenhouse.
Izzy was kind enough to bring in a very special rock to show the class before our amazing race. She called it a “Peacock Rock” This picture does not give the colour within the rock justice. Thank you Izzy for bringing in such a special rock to share with us.
We tested our memory with our Forest School matching game. Everything that we had talked about within class was brought up in this fun game. It was challenging for all of our students but everything was matched up by the end of it! Great job everyone you worked so hard!
Enjoying some active play over lunch, and letting our imaginations run wild! Did I mention we have some beautiful minds?
It’s a good thing we know how to read a map, or we would be walking in circles all day long! Our map took us all around our spacious Heathcote property and let us create new memories to treasure, it’s pretty amazing where a map can take you.
Our last task was to create another fire! One fire was started by Alice, Jack and Emily. Our kids have gained the skills and knowledge to seek, build and start their own fires without any help at all! I am so proud of everyone and all their hard work. Finding down sticks under the snow isn’t easy.
I cannot thank you enough (parents and kids) for the incredible 1st Forest School semester we just had, and jumping into this program with me! We have crushed our goals, gained knowledge, confidence and budding friendships through our laughter and tears. We are looking forward to the all the new ones we make this Spring!
Check out our bonus pictures below!
Have a healthy, happy holiday everyone! See you in the New Year!
With winter finally here we decided to stay close to home and focus our day on fire, shelter and cooking! The windy weather did not slow our students down..I think it gave them more energy! It was also great to see the kids imagination play unfold with each other, from turning the sleds into a train (stops and pick up included) to being reindeer, and gathering food. This bonding time is extremely important for our kids to connect with eatchother and create memories! To earn our cooking bead this week, we decided to challenge ourselves with bread, and a sweet treat with chocolate chip cookies!
Question of the day was: How burnt does the food have to be before you do not eat it?
As per usual our day started with our smudging ceremony, check-ins, and of course our amazing show and tell items that our students brought from home. A huge Thank-you to Alice for bringing in a seagull skull (it was incredibly clean as well), and Adam brought in a fully intact bees nest…no bees included.
We are so proud of Aaron for rocking his first fire today! Aaron used minimal amount of tinder and dead, dry and down sticks from our area. The fire kept us super warm all day! Thanks buddy!
We focused on a different type of shelter today, which was the “Quincy”. This common winter shelter is a snow mound that will be dug out to be able to fit one or two students at a time. We started in the green house with an in-class discussion about this type of shelter, and then took our learning outside to create this structure. We are hoping that the snow fall this week will add to our shelter and help make it bigger!
These awesome little people were working hard on earning their cooking bead today, and if you didn’t eat the burnt part of the bread, it was pretty amazing! Butter makes everything better…or so they say!
We took a break from our winter wonderland to create some Christmas ornaments from natural, and man made objects. Our students have amazing imaginations and at the end we came out with some awesome creations to take home.
Cookies…..need I say more?
High Fives all around for all our students who worked so hard today with Quincy building, fire starting, cooking and active group play! There was a lot of beads and stickers earned today: 3 cooking beads, 3 storytelling beads, 2 respect stickers and 1 honesty.
Next Week – We cant believe how fast the time has gone and how sad it will be to say “goodbye” next Wednesday at our final week of the fall semester! We will be putting our students to the test on our Winter wonderland “Amazing Race” challenges. Let the games begin!
We’ll do a breakdown by day this week, as the days seemed to unfold with some variance this week!
Tuesday After our usual ceremonial start to the day, students were tasked with the challenge of setting up a tarp structure nearby – large enough to fit everyone in it and sturdy enough to weather the storm (ie. Matt with a bucket of snow). They’ve been learning about natural structures throughout the semester and had the opportunity to sew their previous knowledge together for this activity. Because of their incredible teamwork, creativity and resourcefulness, this was a huge success for our students.
Making a tarp shelter
Thanks to Mother Nature, snowshoeing is our new preferred form of locomotion when we are traveling around the land. So we ventured into the woods where we made char-cloth, practiced our flint and steel sparks, shared stories, contributed to our existing natural shelters, listened to a teaching bead about fire nests and simply enjoyed our first real snowfall at Forest School… all around our student-made fire!
Earning a teaching bead: teaches us how to make a fire nest to start the fire.
Wanting to warm ourselves up, we tapped into a local resource we have and used the Youth Centre space for lunch! What a great space to play low-organized games and take part in cooperative learning! Students also had a nice warm place to master some new knots that will be helpful moving forward! Some students were able to master multiple knots, including the bowline, double figure-eight, truckers-hitch, half-hitch, slip and more.
We finished our day off back at By Gone Days after another snowshoe out to our far campsite. Here we filled out fire-kits, recognized some peer appreciations and enjoyed some active play in our shelters. We just love seeing your children engage with one another outside using their incredible imaginations – some being waitresses using sheets of crisp snow, others spending snow-money to buy material for their nature-house, and others still just climbing and falling into the deep snow-covered ground.The benefits of child-initiated play are vast – including motor skill development, healthy social development and increased activity level. But sometimes, it’s as simple as hearing the giggles and laughs, and watching the creative play unfold. The way that they connect with one another and interact so fully with their environment surely shapes how they will see nature for the rest of their lives.
Wednesday The students on Wed couldn’t wait to jump into the snow. They dropped off their packs, suited up with snowshoes and were off to take advantage of the fresh, untouched powder! After our usual morning routines (smudge and check-ins, done inside because of the weather!) the students were given the challenge of setting up a tarp they could all fit under. Because we’ve made numerous natural shelters already, this was the very last challenge in order to earn their shelter beads. With huge gusting winds and drifting snow, they sure did earn them!
As the winds picked up even more, we moved inside and practiced other hard skills. Students created their long-awaited fire kits (thanks for the jars everyone!) with birch bark, saw dust, candles, cattails and more. We created and tried using a bow drill. It was hard, tiring work but with the friction we were able to make smoke and we are confident that next time we’ll be able to start a fire from it.
working hard to catch a spark!
Students were also given the chance to earn their Knots bead today. The mission was to learn a Bowline knot – see if your child can recreate it at home! Some students were able to master other knots as well including the double figure-eight, truckers-hitch, half-hitch and more.
After lunch, a couple fantastic Craft Bead presentations, and some exploratory-time, the Sun finally came out and we were off to brave the conditions again. Students got on their snowshoes and off we went – straight into the wind! We cut across the field and found shelter in the trees. Once out of the wind, students built their own shelters and we finished the day gathered around a small fire.
Congrats to all Shelter and Knot bead recipients, as well a Travel Bead, Teaching Bead (for teaching compass skills), Nature Lover Bead, 2 Craft Beads, and some Reflection Beads!
Next Week:
Hard to believe it’s our final week of the Semester! We’ll be having some fun in a Winter Wonderland “Amazing Race” style challenge.
Afterwards, we invite every to our Final Celebration at Bygone Days farm is the weather is good and if it is freezing, windy and or snowy then we will host it at the Collingwood Earthship 633 Sixth street at 3:15 pm.
A big thanks to all the parents for having everyone dressed perfectly for the conditions this week! We’ve noticed that a scarf or neck warmer, second pair of gloves and extra socks would be a great addition to the winter clothing list.
This week we headed out to Loree Forest with our Collingwood Forest school crew. This popular hiking spot connects onto the Bruce Trail, which is 840km long! Our goal was to hunt down some great animal tracks, and decipher what we found. Loree forest is tucked away within the beautiful Niagara Escarpment, which is protected by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). We are lucky to have access to all these amazing trails here in The Town of Blue Mountains, they allow us to always be able to have an adventure, without even leaving our backyard! Check out how our awesome Forest School kids spent their day!
The brisk air didn’t stop us from exploring the great outdoors.
Our kids waiting to go on our hike!
Our active play is a great way to burn off our energy from all the excitement forest school brings. Within our morning walk, we found a wolf and a german shepherd protecting their baby “Mine craft wolf.”
We took some time to discuss different types of prints we might see on our hike, while knowing the difference between a “canine” and an “feline” footprint. Some of the animals we focused on were: Coyote, Dog, Fox, Cougar, Black Bear, Deer, Turkey and Rabbit.
A huge thank you to Adam and Alice for bringing in some amazing animal findings. Adam was lucky to find a FULL shed skin from a milk snake, while Alice found a piece of fox jaw, and two back bones from an unknown bird.
These two pictures show a glimpse of the animal tracks we found on our hike. There must have been a party we were not invited to, because there was an abundance of deer and turkey footprints.
Warming up by the fire is a staple activity for us at Forest School, and it just never feels right without roasting some marshmallows. Our kids are getting really good at starting their own fires, and being able to use a “strike-anywhere-match”. We spent some time telling each other interesting facts about animals. Some examples were “Elephants are pregnant for an estimated 2 years”, “Beavers slap their tails on the water to scare predators”, “Wolfs can birth a litter of 9”, and yes “Bears do poop in the woods”.
Our last activity of the day was to create some music, and magic with our own music sticks!! We made them with yarn, bells and sticks we found. The bells brought a little Christmas spirit to our day, and was a fabulous end to a jam packed, fun filled day!
Great job to everyone who found an animal track, it was tricky but everyone pulled it off and found something amazing! This meant we handed out our FIRST Animal Tracking bead, with a total of 6 tracking beads.
Reminder – We are expecting lots of snow this week so extra gloves, scarves or neck buffs are a great idea to keep extra warm…maybe winter has decided to stay!
Next Week – We will be focusing on another new bead, the cooking bead. Our class took a poll and will be making cookies and home made bread, so yummy! Hopeful there will be some leftovers, but we can’t make any promises.
Thanks for reading this week, talk to you next week!
