Learning Blocks and Compasses

Posted on by

Hey Folks,

Another fun-filled week of productive play and learning at Forest School, with a special contribution from Collingwood’s Healthy Kids Community Challenge who brought us their mobile Imagination Playground. We spent a solid portion of our day working collaboratively using the block-based system to build, smash and recreate various castles, towers, bird’s eye views of small villages, buildings, cars, waterfalls – you name it! Your children unleashed their creativity to manipulate the foam blocks and noodles to modify existing target games – like baseball, horseshoe and other tossing games. They collectively built a large creative structure for lunch (with a moat all around us too one day). They met our team building “bobsled initiative” by working together to move a ball across the field using the “pipes”. And they enjoyed the social aspect of hands-on productive playtime. Keep your eyes open in parks and green spaces near your neighbourhood as the HKCC has dates booked in June to visit local parks with their mobile playground to encourage fun, active play outside – and it’s FREE! For more information, check them out here.

More exciting news for Forest School: Thanks to Free Spirit Gardens, we now have our very own raised veggie bed! We drew on our previous knowledge about species competition, plant needs and wants, and appropriate spacing. We measured, marked and planted multiple tomato and pepper seedlings! It was fun getting our hands dirty to grow our own food!

In the afternoon, we spent our day learning about all things related to maps and orienteering – Cardinal Directions, parts of a compass, how to travel. Using various hard copies of maps, we identified key components of maps (title, legend, directions, scale), then updated our Snowy Owl and Red Tail map of the property. Shortly after (on Wednesday), we ventured to our sit spots to create a bird’s eye map of their own area (Thursday they made classroom maps due to weather). If your child is asking for a needle, cork, and magnet, they are likely referring to the craft we made today to demonstrate how magnetic North works. Did you know you can make your own?

To earn our new Travel Bead (white), students were required to successfully navigate an orienteering course created on the property – all students were able to independently travel between points using their newly honed compass skills! Quite impressive! This hard skill will be of extra importance as we approach our culminating activity for our final day at Forest School (last week of June).

In addition to the Travel Beads earned this week, two students earned their Peer Support Bead – a very special bead designed to represent the consistent awareness and curiosity of others, empathy, and general support of one another through meaningful friendship and play! A very significant bead at Forest School. Congratulations!

As weather continues to warm up, a friendly reminder to bring lots of water, a sun hat, sunscreen – and even a change of clothes, swimsuit and a towel! We will soon be selling Forest School T-Shirts for those who are interested! ($10.00). Lastly, please remember to bring in your parent/student feedback forms, if you haven’t already. We would really love to hear from you!

Enjoy the rest of your week,

Matt and Kim (and Aden!)

The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw

Posted on by

Hey Everyone,

We dove into birds this week and were fortunate enough to identify over a dozen different species. With robins, red wing blackbirds, cedar wax wings, so many waterfowl, and (our personal favourite) some killdeer to name a few, we had such an abundance of birds to ID and observe. We even saw a Red Tailed Hawk!

We explored a new forest area in search of pine cones (now aptly named “Pine Cone Valley”), then got sidetracked for awhile at the “Concrete Factory” (a wet, sandy, muddy mix in the “Endless Desert”). We brought the cones back to the school house and made good old fashioned peanut butter and seed bird feeders to hang in our sit spots in hopes of attracting some new friends.

From the stories of the students, we hear you had a happy Easter and enjoyed an extra long weekend! We had our own version of an egg hunt at the forest school this week. Students learned about maps and the use of latitude and longitude to find coordinates. We then got out the GPS and did an egg geocache, receiving new coordinates at each egg found, leading us to the next. The grand finale? A pot filled with hot chocolate cooked over the fire.

A BIG congratulations to our first recipients of beads this week. We gave out 3 craft beads for a great homemade bag, gravity-tension thorn spinner, and an egg carton museum; a storytelling bead for a wonderful legend told around the fire on the origins of maple syrup; and a 3 group beads for a great reflection activity led by a red tailed hawk, and two group activities lead by Snowy Owls.

See you next week!

Kim and Matt

A sweet, sweet day

Posted on by

Hey Folks,

Looks like Spring snuck up on us as we went from waist deep snowshoeing to jumping through mud and puddles in just days!

After our smudge ceremony and a check-in, the groups took full advantage of the warm weather and were off to the far corner of our map to visit the Sugar Shack. It took us awhile to get there – burrows to discover; hornets nests to look at; hills to climb; tracks to follow; hundreds of fossils (and subsequently a map region now known as “Fossil Mountain”). You know, the usual.

When we finally arrived, we were greeted by Al and Jim who took us on a journey through the process of making syrup. We were just in time – some caramelized syrup was coming hot off the stove. The students dove in and were given sticks to eat to their hearts content (which they did!). To top it all off, we then made some tasty maple toffee in the snow.

After indulging, the students were eager to lend a hand and went to collect all the sap the (50ish) trees had provided. Al was also more than happy to teach and allow the students to drill and tap holes, then put a bucket on their own trees.

We said goodbye to our Maple Mentors and went back to the school house for lunch. After just one morning, we had so many new things to add to our maps!

During the afternoon, we took some time in the classroom to check out the cross section of a tree and determine where all that sap was coming. Ask your child to share their cross-section with you!

The rest of the afternoon saw us introduce one of our core routines: Sit Spot. Essentially, each child has chosen a spot on the property of their very own. They are to become stewards of their area, and we will be using these spots often for a variety of purposes. Today was all about finding a place that spoke to the students and taking some time there. We followed this by adding their spot to the map and sharing stories about what they found with their peers.

See you next week!

Matt and Kim