Snowy Days

Dear Snow,

Thank you for coming to visit us at Forest School. With your arrival there are some exciting changes to Bygone Days! The tent is a new addition and a warm, fun place to enjoy our snacks and lunch, read stories and listen to the soft pitter patter of you falling on the roof.
The Chickadeees were so excited about the tent this morning, but were quickly drawn outside by the anticipation of all the activities you provide for us! We pulled each other on the sleds and even went tobogganing! You also provide a refreshing treat (we will have to wait a bit to see if November snow tastes better than December snow!)…don’t worry though we made sure to only taste the fresh fallen snow!
We have noticed that you are cold, fluffy and sometimes slippery, weigh down the tree branches, and create a hush across the land. Although it takes us longer to trek, we went on an adventure to Ducky’s campsite where we played and worked together to build snow forts. It would be ideal if you stuck around so we can add to our forts next week.
We are so thrilled that you have arrived Snow, and we look forward to more fun with you!
From Monday’s Chickadees, Emily and Krista

Snowmageddon

Hi Folks,

I think we were all super surprised this morning when we saw so much of that white stuff! We can’t believe we almost forgot how beautiful it is. Our students had a beautiful moment at the start of our day  – venturing into the woods, we all found a quiet, personal space where we caught cotton ball size snow flakes with our tongue. It was so quite with no wind or birds to listen to we were in awe of the silence. We observed so much, and we are so proud of our students and their amazing owl eyes.

It was amazing to see all our builders at work this morning ranging from epic igloos, snow city with walls, towers and a full volcano in the middle, snowmen and a race car track fully equipped with a pit stop and stands. Our students even had the chance to play a Forest School favourite game – Fox and Bunny. A game of endurance, chance and pure luck, along with a new twist from a student – the Elder Bunny. The magical bunny that can bring a bunny road block back to life! It was a huge hit, so you should ask your child about it.

We continue to track, explore, share, reflect and build relationships with each other, ourselves and our environment. Thanks for a great snowy day!

Krista and Travis

Ice Fishing!

Hi Folks!

What a fun week we had learning about ice safety and ice fishing! We had the opportunity to explore the big pond at Bygone Days and were thankful that the ice was thick enough to allow us to try our hand at ice fishing! In fact, it was SO thick that we could technically drive on it, if we wanted to!

Though we didn’t have much luck catching anything until the very last day, students seemed to really enjoy the experience and were all keen to use the auger and look down the holes! We had all sorts of equipment – tip ups, mini rods, handmade stick rods and more! A huge thank you to our friend Mark who brought in a pop-up camo hut for us to use on Friday! This dark hut allowed us to watch the fish swim by (at least most of them!) the glowing hole and it made for some real entertainment! Their focus was incredible and the loud cheers in unison felt like they were watching the Olympic Gold Medal Game! It was very exciting!

With the wonderful amount of snow we have at our FNS home-base, students worked hard to create, build and destroy all sorts of projects around camp. Great teamwork and collaboration always unfold from these student-led experiences.

Thanks parents for providing all sorts of proper gear this week – with ice fishing comes a sneaky sort of wet and our students were able to enjoy this experience because of all of the gear you helped pack! So thank you!

And a big shout-out to all of our bead recipients this week! Students are eagerly working hard for various beads and it’s creating such a fabulous and tight-knit FNS community!

See you next week!

Matt and Kim
More Photos:
 

Swinging Bridges, Black Diamonds and Mysterious Forests

Hey Folks!

Well Winter is back! And hopefully here to stay.  This week at Forest School we were on a field trip for Wed and Thurs and spent the day exploring at Bygone Day’s on Friday.

Wednesday and Thursday

Off to Scenic Caves this week for some fun cross-country skiing and exploring the area.  We started off both days with learning basic skills: how to move, slow down, climb hills, and most importantly how to get up after falling (Turtle-French Fries-Knees to Skis-And UP!).  After some practice laps, students we were off exploring.  Our Wednesday group made it all the way to the lookout point (though it was foggy!) and the Thursdays group braved the fierce snow and tackled the meandering hills – including part of a black diamond for experts only! It was a lot of work climbing some steep hills, but ask your child if it was worth it in the end!

We’re really proud of all the hard work our students put in.  For some it was their first time ever on skis and everyone committed themselves to learn.  After a lot of successes, tumbles and speeding through the trees, it was time for a well earned lunch.

Have you  ever been to Scenic Caves?  Then you know it boasts one of the best parks in the area – just ask your kids! Students loved using all of the fun equipment, especially with all of the snow! Afterwards, student made their way down the snow covered trail and onto the largest suspension bridge in Ontario – what a wonderful way to see our beautiful home! Students enjoyed the panoramic view of roughly 10000 sq. km. overlooking Georgian Bay and they were keen to point out their homes and make connection to places from such a high vantage point.

On Thursday, some students braved a challenge route and took the snow-filled Creekside Trail underneath the ravine and up the other side! We enjoyed a lot of play, collaboration and teambuilding on the slope of the escarpment too.  We loved sliding down into the snowy valley and worked well together (and creatively!) trying to climb our way out.  After all of their hard work,  you probably noticed some pretty tired kids this week!

A big thanks to the folks Scenic Caves – they provided us with equipment, their beautiful property and infrastructure, and a wood fired cabin all to our  ourselves.

FRIDAY

On Friday we saw even MORE snow and had an adventure filled day at Bygone Days. Students ventured out to Mysterious Forest to explore the wonderful natural shelters of our coniferous trees – which provided a great space to play some of our favourite games like sardines and camouflage! Students continue to be engaged in our subnivean tunnel activities, fascinated by discovering more ice below the deep snow and loved to build and spend time around the fire! We visited our sit spots (and created some new ones) and recognized some of the amazing changes that have happened over the winter.  It was an awesome day and especially sunny by the afternoon!

NEXT WEEK:

Weather permitting: ICE FISHING! If you have your own gear, or nifty trinkets that might be helpful or fun during ice fishing, don’t hesitate to bring them in!

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

More Pics:

Wed/Thurs

Friday

 

 

Sit Spots, Snowshoes, and Skis

Hey Folks!

This week we welcomed back the cooler temps (well at least until it warmed up again on Friday) and we took advantage of the little bit of “Winter” we had to explore.

Wednesday and Thursday

We focused this week on getting to know our property a little better and spent time exploring and returning to places we haven’t been to in awhile.  While hiking out and about, we discovered a bunch of cool things:

-That despite the warmer temps, our snow caves continue to persist!
-The Riverbed Campsite is aptly named, and covered in icy water.
-That Fossil Mountain really was made for Tubing!
-That we have the best, gigantic “loose parts” (black pipes) that lead to all sorts of fun, including subnivean tag and 24 m long subterranean tunnel exploration.
-Broomball is intense!

We also took time to refocus on of our core routines: Sit Spots. If you are new to sit spots, we ask our students to choose to visit one special place in nature repeatedly (almost each week) and to get to know it as well as they can. Students are asked to spend varying amounts of time sitting quietly in their spots. In this special spot, we learn to sit still, be by ourselves, and enjoy the feeling of familiarity and knowledge of place that develops over time. Ultimately, a student’s sit spot will become like a safe home from which their curiosity can spark an interest in nature’s mysteries. This time focuses on student-centered learning, place-based learning, personal growth, scientific-inquiry, solitary time and reflection.  We also spend time building, creating and playing together in our sit spots.   This week saw the creation of communities of neighbours in our “Sumac Forest” and “Fortress” areas.  It’s inspiring watching the fun unfold and imaginations run wild.

Friday

We had a special field trip on Friday to Highlands Nordic Outdoor Centre for a day of cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.  After a thorough skills-based lesson, we were off to explore – and what a beautiful day we had for it.  We spent the morning skiing and quickly learned that climbing up hills are hard, but totally worthwhile for the long, fast descents!

After lunch, we headed on a snowshoe hike down into the forest, with awesome views of Wasaga Beach and more.  We played a few games and explored animal trails along the way.  A big thanks to everyone at Highlands Nordic who helped us out!

Next Week:
Wednesday and Thursday groups will be on a Field Trip to Scenic Cave for cross country skiing.  Please bring your own equipment if you have it.  Friday we will remain at the school

We gave out a lot of beads this week! Congrats to the recipients!

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

More Pics:

Wednesday/Thursday

Friday

Uncovering our Curriculum… literally.

Hey Folks!

As often happens at Forest School, we head into the day with a plan – and  sometimes it gets mostly ditched due to emerging interests and opportunities.  What a pleasant surprise this week when we discovered that the loss of all our snow from the wavering temperatures last week resulted in an epic ice rink!

Our planned Science activities were put on the back burner, or at least shifted focus the minute we uncovered the rink.  While we still did a few experiments – the water volume of snow, snow as an insulator, water and ice density, snowflake formation and even snow volcanoes –  suddenly our days were focused on ice: it’s creation, how to travel on it safely, and inevitably it’s destruction.  (Sidebar: It’s amazing how much kids love destroying ice!)

We watched as our rink turned into many different things over the week – from balancing acts to sliding competitions; broomball rink to human curling; and full on skating rink by Friday – it became our central focus over the week and was so much fun.  Thanks for the flexibility of our parents in sending their kids to school with skates!

When we weren’t on the rink, we were off exploring the property and marveling at the changes that occurred with the wacky weather.  One of the greatest things about Forest School is the repetitive exposure to the same places.  Students make genuine connections to the land and have a vested interest in their creations and special spots.  We got to see how our snow trenches didn’t survive the thaw, but our snow caves did (albeit smaller)!  We were able to drill holes through the ice of the big pond and check it for safe travel while learning about potential dangers while making shortcuts.  We discovered that our “Riverbed” campsite is aptly named and is covered in half a foot of ice and water now!

And all of this spawned from a simple question by a student – “Hey, can I clear off that patch of ice?”

Next Week:
We have a regular day at Bygones Tues-Thurs, and Fridays group will be going Cross Country Skiing at Highlands Nordic! Please bring skis if you have them, otherwise we have you covered.

Please remember to let us know your intentions for the Spring Session as spaces are filling up!

Cheers,

Kim and Matt

More Pics:

Exploring the Bruce Trail

Hey Folks!

This week at Forest School we wanted to take our kids off the property and explore some of the Bruce Trail that is located right in our own “backyard”. Words could not express how much fun we had today exploring a new part of the Bruce Trail, some of our hiking goals were to discover “Standing Rock” and find the newly renovated “Frank’s Lime Kiln”. Let the adventure begin!

Before we headed out on our journey, we took a slight detour to “Fossil Mountain” to take time to uncover some fossils by peeling apart layers of shale rock. The discoveries made were amazing! Our students got their hands dirty and found different types of rock, fossils, shells, seeds and ice.

 

Our first trek started at the Nottawasaga Lookout, located just outside of Duntroon. The “Standing Rock” trail is a 1.2 km side loop that encompasses flat and rocky terrain, including caves and crevasses. Bravery and Leadership beads were earned all throughout our afternoon escapade. Our kids ducked, crawled and slid down 5 ice slides, it gave them an easy head start for the rest of our hike!
Before we headed back to school, we wanted to let the kids explore a 150-year-old kiln. This kiln had been built in 1860 and was restored in 2015 – the outcome is beautiful. The kids also had a great time learning a little bit about our local pioneer history.

 

 

 

It was great to see our class being so cohesive through out the caves. Our comfort zones were tested, and challenge-by-choice was presented. Moving slowly, and communicating was top notch today! We also worked towards leadership, peer support, spotting, encouraging one another and trust. We are so proud of everyone, you all worked so hard.

Beads and Stickers were abundant today! 8 Bravery Beads, 1Show and Tell Bead, 1 Travel Bead, 1 Leadership Bead, 2 Peer Support, 1 Curiosity Bead and 1 Nature Lover Bead. As usual love, respect and wisdom stickers were earned as well.

 

Next Week – This will be our last class for the Winter semester, can you believe it!? We will be doing a recap of everything we have learned over the semester, with lots of laughs, fun, and games. We are excited for the spring semester to start and to meet all the new faces!

Until Next week!

Krista and Neal

Our epic day!

  

    

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

    

We may all be different fish, but in this school we swim together

Hi 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!

Thanks for checking in this week

Krista and Neal

Our wonderful day!