Our Fall field trip this year was back to beautiful Metcalfe Rock for some climbing and caving where our Collingwood school also got to meet our sister schools from Meaford and Wasaga Beach. As if hiking through ancient cedar forests, drinking water straight from the Earth and exploring and playing at this magical place weren’t epic enough, students challenged themselves with Rock Climbing and Caving through the ancient limestone rock. We stood alongside and watched comfort zones being pushed, nerves being tested and the inevitable huge smiles of pride that followed. We’ll keep it short this week and let the pictures below speak for themselves!
Imagine yourself a sly fox, tiptoeing through the dewy grass, senses on high alert. A flash of movement catches your attention, you take off, sprinting after the small mouse. It dives into a tiny hole just as you are closing in on it! Foiled this time, but you know it won’t be long before you sense another mouse scurrying along.
This is how we started our morning, in an epic capture the flag style battle of the foxes and mice. We continued our embodiment of woodland creatures as we gathered stores for winter (we were feeling the chill this morning!). All the way to Grape Valley, we collected what we thought squirrels and chipmunks might stash away, and then created “cupboards” to hide our treasures in. After taking a short walk, each woodland critter was given the challenge of finding their way back to their cupboard. Navigating back to their cupboards was no problem, but we may need to observe the real chipmunks and squirrels a little more closely to determine what they actually stash away for winter!
After we ate our actual human lunches, painting and fire making got into full swing as we enjoyed the afternoon sun.
Thanks for a thoughtful, energetic and imaginative day Chickadees!
We had a fun week again in Collingwood that saw us venturing all over the map – building fires, eating pears and grape jelly, getting stuck in mud, running from hail, epic burr battles, new songs (Aster and Goldenrod – maybe you’ve heard it?!) and even some archery. It was a jam packed week!
Our overarching theme for all days was deepening our sensory awareness. While this happens regularly through our Core Routines and play, we were deliberate this week in removing dominant senses to get more intimate with the Forest. We tried out a classic – blindfold tree walk. Student’s were led (more like zigzagged and spun – an exercise in trusting as well) by a partner to a random tree in the Forest with the inability to see. They had to use their other senses to get to know the tree and it’s location, before being led back, unblindfolded and let loose to find it. It was remarkable to watch the hunt unfold and debrief the tactics used to locate the trees – and more often than not students were successful! We scaffolded this with other sensory awareness challenges, sit spots and games, and got to practice moving quietly through the Forest with our fox feet, listening closely with our Deer Ears and eventually using our Owl Eyes to see as well.
Thanks to all those that made it out to the Meet The Teacher night. We hope you got to explore some of the special places your kids have grown to love and now have a better understanding of where all their stories take place.
This week we welcomed the rain, and while some of us may stay inside to stay dry, our students embraced the rain and discovered our soil ecosystem, which was full of life! We even learned a new song called Young and Wild – ask your child to sing it for you!
While some of our students started their day playing rain hockey/rain soccer, some were working on their powers that controlled the weather (wind), and discovered magical crowns, similar to what the fairies wear.
We then ventured to “hot chocolate mountain” and really began diving into the dirt, which brought extreme discoveries. Ranging from frogs, millipedes, HUGE worms, spiders, ant farms, magical willow monsters, and even a Red Spotted Newt! This was a great find for our students because it was new, and the second ever found on Bygone Days Property.
Along our adventure we even came across our pear tree, and we thought it was a great day to introduce our students into cooking over the fire, and we are so proud of the teamwork for stick collecting. We are continuing each week to work towards building our fire skills with our 3 D’s (Dead, Dry and Down) – which is even harder when it’s wet outside, but our sweet reward was worth the wait!
We love taking the time to sing, dance, get really muddy, explore and investigate even if it’s the roots of a plant! We love to give children the guidance and empowerment to try new things even if its letting a spider walk on their leg, and as one of our students said today, ” I’m scared of spiders but I’m trusting myself”.
What a week of sunshine we had! And to celebrate the changing of seasons and prepare for the Fall Equinox next Monday, we took advantage of this warm weather and created a new ritual we like to call “Fall into Fall”. It’s simple – take a ride in our giant voyageur canoe on the big pond, head out to the deeper water and challenge ourselves to jump in! We had a blast all week as students made the leap, saying a final goodbye to Summer.
As is the case with all weeks, our days vary quite a bit – too much in fact to summarize all the magnificent little details here (be sure to check out the whiteboard at the end of the day which highlights some group-specific fun). However, we did have some moments we’d love to share!
Our plant of the week was the Rose this week, and what better way to get connected with it then to make something yummy from the rose hips – tea! Over the course of the week, students collected, chopped, and boiled to make a sweet tea unlike any other over the fire. We also set some aside, dehydrated them and made tea bags as we prepare a warm pick-me-up for chillier days this winter.
Students also received their journals this week and got to work filling them with inspiring thoughts, new findings and lots of cool observations. Journaling is one of our core routines – something we will visit weekly – and is so important. One of our Meaford teachers summed it up nicely: “By the end of the semester we hope the journals will be full of observations and stories weaved into a bigger picture of nature connection.”
And of course, there’s everything else: swimming, infusing oils, charcoal art, fire building, the continuing of caterpillar mania, natural ropes, a Blue Heron grad ceremony, hikes and adventures, sit spots, pine resin torches, songs, carving and more.
Thanks for stopping by for another great day at Forest and Nature School, and with all this beautiful weather we didn’t waste any time. We welcomed all of students with the sound of ukuleles, which led to lots of singing and our students even playing their own tunes this morning. We are always encouraging our students to express themselves through song, dance, art or story telling, and we welcome more instruments every week!
Our students were in full swing this morning playing child led games, working on our hunting and hiding skills, which make our students amazing trackers and are even starting to build relationships that embody respect, communication and genuine empathy. We have so much to learn from each other and this is why we encourage our older students to spend time with our younger students, which naturally happens and the learning is abundant!
Today we challenged our younger students and continue to wander and explore our new Forest School home, and while all of our students work on core routines, each students day unfolds differently. Some students focused on the little things like catching new creatures (tree frogs, millipedes, caterpillars, cicadas, and one legged grasshoppers!). Plants were a big topic today from ground mushrooms to acorns falling from the sky, along with which animals we can catch (chipmunks and squirrels). Some of our other students worked on construction projects, identification, journals, art work, ultimate hiking, tracking and we even started collecting Cicada exoskeletons!
We continue to build our school map which lead us to all of our amazing finds and continue to make the Blueberry trails our own personal magic forest. We look forward to seeing everyone next week to make some more music!
……..All were a major part of our day as Chickadess at Forest school today!
Serious construction got under way as soon as we got to Lakeside, where the students spent time looking for frogs, fashioning fishing apparatus, digging rivers and burying pipes to observe the water flow. Teamwork was abundant in carrying the heavy buckets of water, and all were fascinated when the water came shooting out of the pipe systems. We also built a fire, found caterpillars and bugs, and made some dirt cakes.
After lunch we took a trip to the “magic dirt mountain” and searched for magic stones, which we decorated with paint and glitter! We made sure to thank the earth for our stones, as we read a story about giving back when we take from the environment.
We also found a mysterious jawbone on our travels. Who can tell us what it might be from next week?
A big welcome to all our new families, and welcome back to our old friends at FSFNS this year! It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come and how much we’ve grown since day one, and as we enter our 5th year as a school we are more excited than ever! At the end of each week we’ll have a post up about some of the highlights from our Painted Turtle and Snowy Owl programs. Follow along all year, and without further ado, here we go.
We had a great week with all our students connecting with the land, ourselves and each other and really starting to get to know the area. For some of our students, it was a chance to notice many changes and reconnect with old favourite places. For others, it was an opportunity to discover and explore pieces of our wonderful space. Our days were filled with getting to know one another and reminiscing – and of course fires, hikes, play, imaginations running wild, storytelling, nature breaks, bugs (especially caterpillars!), wild edibles and plants, music, fishing and so much more.
Given our approach to education, our days varied immensely with each day unfolding the way it needed to, given the interests and emergent opportunities. From fires to fishing, caterpillars to toads literally everywhere, thunderstorms to hot sunny days, we took the time to just settle in this week and get familiar with some of our core routines and our new community. We look forward to uncovering all there is to see and learn this year!
Welcome to the Tuesday Chickadee group friends and family!
Had you been anywhere near Bygone Days you would have heard us calling enthusiastically to one another “chicka-dee-dee-dee!” all day long. We worked on our quiet fox feet as well, to make sure that we don’t surprise all the critters before we get a chance to observe them.
Discovering our mutual love for frogs, we headed to the pond to search for some. We met the Painted Turtles group there and helped them work on a frog sanctuary, and fine tuned our magnifying glass skills with some interesting fungi found on a log.
As the sun moved across the sky we headed to Maple Forest, with a special mission to create some nests for our new found “eggs” (golf balls). The chickadees keenly took on a caring roll for their egg, and we came up with a game where each chickadee built a nest to camouflage their egg from the “weasel”. One egg was camouflaged so well it is still in the forest!
The laughs were rolling and the questions were flowing, it was a great day to be a Chickadee! I am looking forward to the new discoveries we will have next Tuesday in the forest!
What an amazing day to welcome new and familiar faces back to Forest School, and our Chickadees didn’t waste anytime getting back into the swing of things. We had a busy morning filled with games, running, building, obstacle courses, a very talented band, and our returning students even helped with our morning fire!
Jumping into our core routines (opening circle, sit spots), our Chickadees were constantly practicing their Deer ears (excelling listening), Owl eyes (excellent vision) and Fox feet (being super sneaky). These skills were used while we found an abundance of small creatures only found by those who believe in the magic of the woods! Some of the smaller friends we found were Caterpillars, Spiders, Worms, Fire Ants, A Preying-mantis and Grass Hoppers (great job to all of those who caught one, and showing us that their pee stains your hands – But with a little hand sanitizer, cleaned right up!).
While bugs were the highlight of our day, mother nature provided moments for us to relax and learn about her other offerings, such as Plantain, Goldenrod and Walnut Seeds. Coming close to the end of our day we ended with an amazing and very skillful game of soccer.
We had a day full of laughing, adventure, exploring and first times, and we couldn’t have asked for a better group of chickadees to share our day with!
Thanks for stopping by,
Emily and Krista and the FNS Team.
Check out some pictures below to see how our day went!
