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!
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!
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 arerunning 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!
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!
This week brought another great day at Forest School, and today was all about Nature Photography and spending time looking at nature from different points of view. We also enjoyed games, our weekly check ins, reflection time and exploration.
A large portion of our day was spent playing around with cameras, and taking pictures of anything that caught our eye! We talked about composition, contrast, different landscapes and how a picture can tell a story. Thought out the day we brought our focus back on our 6 guide lines of picture taking– Getting close, Leading Lines, Rule of thirds, Natural Framing and Points of view.
After practicing with our cameras we ventured out to the Sugar Shack, which led our students into a Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt. Below are two photos our students took, and it was great to see what our kids saw through their point of view. We will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Shout out – We wanted to say HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY to our big man Layne!
You are incredibly creative, curious and very independent young man. You are a joy to have around each week, with all your jokes and stories, and we look forward to many more weeks to come! We hope this year brings more laughs, play and adventure! Happy Birthday!
Along with our photography theme, we also got creative and earned a craft bead today! Our kids got the chance to create a masterpiece of their choosing. They were given natural objects along with string, beads and paint. Dream catchers and magical sticks (painted sticks) were a big hit. The task was to set their art piece in nature and take a picture of it. Great job everyone!
Oh yeah – this happened today! We bumped into Al and he let us taste some of his Pure Canadian Maple Syrup, tapped right from our own backyard! Needless to say it gave the kids extra energy to run back to the Sugar Shack and check on all the Maple trees. Thanks Al!
Next Week – Due to the unseasonal weather temperatures, we will be switching some weeks around. We will learning all about tapping Maple Trees and tapping for Maple Syrup.
Side Note – If your child has a swiss army knife they are welcome to bring it, as we will be introducing whittling around the fire. We promise to send them home will all ten fingers, and toes!
***This is an archived post from 2017 – our programs are still suspended until further notice – March 2020***
Hey Folks,
Students had the opportunity this week to play around with photography. We got up close and personal with nature and had the chance to see things through a completely new lens. We started the day by playing around with cameras, learning how to work them and testing them out. This led us into various activities, including a “find my picture” hunt and inevitably a full on Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt.
In the afternoon, we went on a long hike around the property and took our photography one step further. We learned about and integrated some different tricks and tips for nature photography:
We learned about “Getting Close”, and seeing the world through a macro lens:
We learned about the use of “Leading Lines”, likes trails or fences, to lure the viewer into the photo.
We learned about the “Rule of Thirds” and how to better place things in a photo.
We learned about “Natural Framing” to capture a photo inside the photo and frame our pictures a little differently.
And finally, we learned about using different “Points of View” in our photos – stepping into a worm’s or ant’s eyes, or seeing like a bird.
Thanks to all the parents who were able to dig up a camera for their child to use. With your help, we were able to equip everyone with their own camera for the day!
Next Week: Although the nice warm days made photography a lot of fun, it also melted the rinks! So because of the weather, we will not be skating next. The positive side to this is that the warm days and cool nights have the Sugar Maples flowing, so we will be doing our Maple Syrup day in lieu of skating.
We were expecting bitter cold, blowing wind, lots of snow, and we came incredibly prepared with our helmets, goggles, extra layers, warm socks and positive attitudes! But low and behold, we were graced with a beautiful, sunny day, light snow and lots of powder! Before we went skiing we wanted to take some time and celebrate Valentines Day with encouraging words and showing love for one another.
Our kids received paper with character traits we all possess. Examples were Playful, Funny, Leader and Confident. They had to choose one student for one trait, and by the end our students were pleased to read all the amazing things their peers think! We will keep all the papers on the wall to remind ourselves what we are, and what we could work towards!
Our adventure started with heading up to Scenic Caves Nordic Centre. Our new hard skill was to learn Cross Country Skiing. “When we get to the top of the hill, you never know where it’s going to take you” – Lucy.
Our kids adapted very quickly to skiing and for those who had experience, it was a great opportunity for a student led lesson. Before we headed out onto the trails one of our Painted Turtles – Layne – took charge and taught his fellow classmates the do and don’ts about skiing. We covered falling, getting up, pole etiquette, putting skis on and off, hills (pizza plow and monster step) and of course how to tuck. Despite the information overload, we soaked it all up and headed out onto the trails!
Hills, hills and more hills, our kids couldn’t get enough of them! If you ever find yourself at Scenic Caves and you would like to see where we explored to go Easy Peezy, Lemon Squeezy, Lookout Point and Georgian View Return.
After a well-deserved lunch and hot chocolate break we then explored the Suspension Bridge! We hiked down into a valley where we got out of our comfort zones and earned some bravery beads, and crossed the 420’ bridge which stands 100 feet from the valley floor! A cool fact about the bridge is that it moves with the wind, so when we walked across we made it move even more! Great job to all who crossed it twice, we have some very brave kids in our class!
Congratulations to everyone who earned their beads and stickers today – Bravery, Leadership, Peer support, Respect and Love among many more!
Next Week – It’s a wild world and we plan on exploring as much as we can! We also will be looking into Nature Photography so if your child has a small camera to use for the day, please bring it along!
We had two great days at Scenic Caves this week! Tuesday we had sunny, warm weather and Wednesday we had some freshly fallen snow to ride in. After a quick lesson on how to ski and how to fall from fellow Forest School Teacher, Krista, we were off to the trails. We had varying levels of experience in our classes and it was awesome to see how everyone helped each other out. Though we had a lot of spills, we had even more laughs and that’s what it’s all about. Some students even pushed themselves to the scenic lookout!
After lunch, a warm fire, and “warm fuzzy” valentines, we hit the trails again… but this time on foot. Sliding down hills and exploring eventually led us to our goal – the suspension bridge. Students pushed themselves out of their comfort zone and together crossed the entire 420′ bridge – despite of shaking and swaying with the wind! After our return, we were able to spend a bit of free time navigating one of the coolest parks we’ve ever seen.
Congrats to our bead recipients: a couple Bingo beads, Litterless Lunch beads and a very special Peer Support bead for one of our Snowy Owls.
It’s a short blog today, but we’ll let the pictures speak for themselves!
Next Week: It’s a wild world out there and we intend to explore it. Our main focus will be Nature Photography and looking at Nature through new perspectives. We will have a couple cameras to share, but if you have one your child can use, please send it along! Thanks!
A big thanks for all the valentine treats, and a another huge thanks to Ben’s parents for the midday hot chocolate break!
Cheers,
Kim and Matt
PS: One of our students is making lightbulb terrariums with the catchy slogan “Bring part of the outdoors into your home inside a lightbulb.” Our entrepreneur has previously donated some profits to the Ontario Federation of Cerebral Palsy (OFCP) in support of his friend. Only $5 each, let us know if you’d like to support him!
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!
