Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Fires and Shelters… and Bear-Hangs? Oh my.

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Hey Folks!

We welcomed Summer back (or for the first time??) at Forest School this week and took advantage of the beautiful, hot days to learn some important survival skills. As we’ve said before, with emergent interests, all of our days looked very different, but we’ll sum up the highlights here.

After our core routines (smudge, check-ins and sit spots), students were tasked with the mission to come up with the “ultimate” campsite. Students created designs and then headed out on our property to find the best place for a campsite – high and dry, sheltered and safe.

After exploring (including the unveiling of a new area on Thursday – “Mysterious Forest”), we chose our sites and students were off to work. Some groups made their shelters out of tarps, with a couple people earning their knots beads, while others opted for a natural shelter and are on their way to earning their Shelter’s Beads. Some students spent their time building trails to the site, while others focused hard on earning their Fire Beads. The Chickadees especially enjoyed gathering material, sorting out sticks for fuel, and trying different types of ignition (match, flint and steel, Bunsen burner). Of course fire safety and leave no trace principles were highlighted! To cap off the Ultimate Campsite experience, the Snowy Owls even had a bear-hang challenge… which was super helpful after the lunch picnic at their campsite!

Throw in some free-play time and watch the creativity unfold! We had swings made, shops open, fences built, and a full on imaginative forest “battle” where bark became a powerful a object. When we finished, we had an important lesson in leave no trace – some sites we dismantled completely, others we gave a permanent home and recorded on our map in the classroom.

And in between all of this, a jumble of creation and play, collaboration and independence, team building and new friendships forming. It’s amazing watching the group dynamics evolve and interests emerge. Music, role-playing, storytelling, building, dismantling, observing… it’s hard to capture it all in words, but it sure is inspiring.

Next Week:
We are going to try and catch some fish and learn some paddling strokes. We have all the gear, but if your child would like to bring in their rod and tackle, no problem!

See you next week,

Kim, Matt and Tamara

PS – If ever you want a better quality copy of a photo, just email us!

More pics:
Tuesday:

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

You are as wonderful as a snowflake

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Our Fall 2016 Video!

Hey Everyone!

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!

Kim and Matt

More Photos:

A cathole? You’ve got to be kidding.

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Hey Folks!

We had a busy day learning all about Leave No Trace (LNT) principles for low impact visits to natural areas.

Let’s go through all 7 together:

Plan ahead
Also known as “know before you go” students had the opportunity to get organized and pack a backpack with all the necessities needed for a one night camping trip. One at time they presented their chosen item to bring and explained why. It was nice as teachers to sit back and watch how things unfolded. Some were necessary – water, matches, first aid – and others were very well justified – a book, a net, a bag of gummies. Thanks to a quick prior lesson using a bandana and coming up with as many purposes as possible, the students now saw things in a different light and opted for multi-purpose tools. Something we didn’t expect was when students started changing the bottle size of soap and sunscreen in order to save space and minimize weight! They thought of just about everything, and even set up a tent in case of rain.

Camp and hike on durable surfaces
AKA Choose the right path. For this one students identified potential problems arising from venturing off trails. They then had their own maze to overcome and find the right trail!

Leave what you find
This may be the hardest lesson for people to learn, but our students were able to brainstorm some really good reasons why. To hammer this point home, we went on an “archeological dig”, where a scene was set (a flat tire on a bike, pump nearby, oil canister, first aid, etc). The first group came up with a story around it, then took one item each away with them. When the second group came, there wasn’t much left to tell the story, so they came up with a completely different view. After a solid debrief, the students were able to make important connection with the natural world (and cultural heritage).

Trash your trash!
This is more than just garbage, as the students learned first hand today! Aside from the classic “pick up garbage”, the students had to complete a “cathole” relay. During the relay, students had to dig a cathole (a 6-8inch hole which they had to measure) fill it with “poop” (a rock), cover it properly and then run back as fast as possible (luckily we have bathrooms on-site!). They also got a first hand look at how long different materials take to decompose.

Respect Wildlife
Through a guided visualization of a special natural place, students became the animal of their choice, when all of sudden their place was ruined by humans. Add to this a “candy toss” where students acted like animals to get at it, and we’ve learned not feed wild animals.

Respect other Visitors
We visited “Camp OhNo” today and it was trashed by previous visitors – and without any prompts the students jumped in to clean it up. We also learned about noise pollution

Be careful with Fire
We covered the basics today and will delve much more in depth with this as the semester progresses. We learned briefly about making fires in existing pits, leaving no trace behind when you are done and never burning garbage, food or anything else that is bad for the environment (why food? It’s remains attracts animals to the spot.) For all their hard work today, they were rewarded with delicious marshmallow to cook over the fire.

So why do we teach LNT? An easy answer is that we are trying to educate those who enjoy the outdoors the potential impacts they can have, and how to minimize or prevent those impacts. More importantly though, we are trying to instill a good environmental ethic, and a respect and love for nature. It teaches us to live in balance with the natural world and is best understood as an educational and ethical program, not as a set of rules and regulations. And it gets us on the same page for the rest of our semester together.

A big thanks to our returning students who have incredible memories of the things they learned last year and were able to take a leadership role and play an important part in our activities. And a big CONGRATS to everyone in earning their first bead! The LNT bead. We also gave away our first craft bead for a fantastic terrarium.

REMEMBER! The key number is 200ft. In the backcountry, your catholes should always be 200ft from camp, water and the trail. Your camp should always be 200ft from water. And always be at least 200ft from animals.

One last thought – a candid moment overhead by us:

“Why do people still make these things [plastics] that are so bad?” – Student 1
“For money.” – Student 2
“Well, we can change that when we get older” – Student 1

We love these moments.

Next Week:
Next week we are calling the “Fall Harvest” where we will learn about the 7 grandfather teachings, get into some food preservation, and create a “stone” soup. The stone soup will be cooked over a fire and it is a soup full of random veggies. If you want to, please send your child with a vegetable to add in to it, preferably from your garden so they can tell us all about it.

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

If we leave no trace, no one will know we were here!

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Hello all!

Thank you for checking in this week, for another amazing forest school day! We first started by welcoming 2 NEW students with open arms and curiosity about our grounds and play areas.

We started our day, just like every day with a smudging ceremony followed by free play and check ins about our week. We then jumped into a fun game called “The Lorax” created by local students from Collingwood’s Forest School. After we were done with our game, we got comfortable in our greenhouse and read the amazing story “The Giving Tree”. Our students then had a discussion about how the story made them feel and what they thought the meaning of the book was.

After our snack we dove right into our Leave No Trace principles. Our students learned all about the 7 Principles and have become very interactive about discussions and activities that tied it all together. They learned what it takes to plan a trip and how much you need to take with you. Also, how to respect our wildlife with given examples of how they would achieve certain goals. As well as campfire rules and how to be respectful to other people who are trying to enjoy nature as well.

Plan ahead
Stick to the Trails
Dispose your waste (Trash and Poop)
Leave what you find
Minimize campfire impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be considerate of others

After lunch our students continued on our 7 principles, and then proceeded to catch frogs (now learning about LNT the frogs were set free back into their homes), slugs, and built forts. There was an abundance of communication, teamwork, leaders, questions, concentration, self-confidence, and motivation. We also learned 3 legends.

Coyote takes water from the Frogs
How the deer got his horns
Coyote and Skunk

Our awesome day came to end with students receiving our FIRST of many beads. This was a huge deal for our students that worked so hard for them! We gave away the “N” bead for Leave NO Trace, along with stickers for our students that ranged from Respect, Bravery, Wisdom, Love and Humility.

Thank you for checking in this week. Next week we are going to dive into the 7 Grandfather Teachings, Native art, and we get to pick our power animals!

Thanks for stopping in!

Krista

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories

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Hey Everyone!

We are once again happy to welcome new students to our program this week, and a big thanks to current students for being so welcoming.

Given that this is Earth week culminating with Earth Day on Friday, we thought what better way to celebrate than understanding how to minimize our environmental impact through Leave No Trace programming? The 7 principles of LNT promote responsible outdoor recreation with the hope of inspiring respect for (and stewardship of) natural spaces. For more info please click here.

Though our two days were slightly different, they both unfolded using these principles, so let’s recap one at a time.

1. Know Before You Go
We set the scene: An exploratory hike later on in the afternoon to a new space on the property (off property on Thursday) we had yet to go. Our first goal? Being prepared to go into this wild place. We pulled out an empty backpack and asked the students what we needed to bring. They chose from things scattered around the property and made sure we had everything possible that we would need, from sunscreen to water, to a compass and map, even marshmallows in case we got lost. We were ready for anything.

2. Choose the right path
Essentially this means stay on the trail and camp on durable surfaces. We played a great team-building game to highlight the importance of not straying from the path. The students had to find their way across a grid path, with only one correct way. Step on the wrong square, and you just squashed an endangered species (or got poison ivy, or stuck in quicksand, etc)! Finally, all students made it through the secret path to the durable campsite, and were so excited we had to do it again.

3. Respect Wildlife
At lunchtime, the teachers played obnoxious visitors. Their target? The herd of snowy owls and red tailed hawks eating quietly in the sun. While one teacher stayed back the required 200 feet with binoculars, the other got much too close, was much too loud and even fed the animals candy! No worries though – he was eventually taken down by the pack. Afterwards, this activity led to a very insightful debrief with the students drawing important parallels with the natural world.

4. Trash is Trash
We started with a visualization of a special place the students had. Then we asked what would ruin this for them. Garbage was the number one answer (followed closely by noise). So on our epic hike the students brought along bags and did a shoreline clean-up (around the other side of Willow Lake Wednesday; bay front clean-up on Thursday with Transition Collingwood and a class from CCI). Multiple full garbage bags worth of trash and recycling were collected! Students are also well aware that we pack out what we pack in.

5. Respect Others
Now known as “love your neighbour”, the students had a good discussion around the fire and in the classroom about how we can respect other people who are enjoying nature as well. The big rule: Don’t let our fun ruin other people’s fun.

6. Be careful with fire!
We are always careful with fire, but this week we learned how to make sure we have fires that leave minimal impacts for the environment. Never burn garbage, always use existing fire pits when possible, clean it up after, only use dead, down and dry wood… students were already well aware of this. One new thing we tried though was cooking on a camp stove. We made a delicious apple cider.

7. Leave what you find
This was one of the harder lessons to learn and understand. We had the students build an art piece of natural materials to show off to the others. We did a gallery walk after, having everyone explain what they made. We then took away a rock or stick, without saying a thing, from each piece. The students reflected on this afterwards that it did not feel good to have their materials taken. This was a catalyst to talk about leaving things in nature for all people to enjoy and really hit home for some folks.

Emergent Learning Alert!
On Thursday we arrived to a mystery scene in front of the school house – fur, blood and scat. Students successfully identified the fur as rabbit and the scat gave away the culprit – a fox (it appears to have moved in under the church). We decided to take time to read a legend about life-cycles and the students were able to put a positive spin on this – the fox needed to feed her pups. We found more evidence of the rabbit and students wanted to hold an impromptu funeral for it (now known as “Blueberry”). The eulogies varied, but were all empathetic. We made a little tombstone, along with a fitting offering of blueberries and sage.

And that’s it – along with our normal sit spot time and other core routines, including free play, it was a busy day! For all their hard work today, students received Leave No Trace bag tags, stickers and our brand new “Leave No Tracer” bead.

Speaking of beads, this week we gave out 5 journaling beads and 2 craft beads, one for a stone/stick hammer and another for a 5 finger family. Congrats!

It’s time for planting in the next 2 weeks, so if your kid is looking through the compost for seeds, don’t be alarmed!

Until next time,
Matt and Kim