Sweeeeeeeeeet!

As Spring arrives, we are reminded why this is one of our favourite seasons – well, we love them all really, but especially the longer days, warmer temperatures, and return of life.  The birds are singing all around us, the plants are blooming again, animals we haven’t seen in awhile are making appearances – and deliciousness is running through our trees.

Over the past couple weeks, our groups have been busy at our Sugar Shack and eagerly working hard (of course with lots of play and exploration in between).   With the Maple sap flowing like mad, our students have had the chance to tap the trees, harvest the sap, boil it down and reap the sweet rewards of homemade maple syrup.  Perhaps they’ve shared some with you?

There’s no better reaction than the awe and sheer astonishment of a student who has freshly drilled a hole only to have sap come pouring out… and then the frantic placement of a spile to capture the drips in a bucket, or better yet directly on the tongue.  Even more, students learned about ratios, measurements, maintaining fires, chopping wood (older kids!), sustainable harvesting and pure pleasure of producing something through hard work.  It’s no wonder they were eager to check “their” trees the minute they returned!

Of course, the melt brings along many other wonders, too.  Birds defending their territories and searching for mates.  The hidden skulls, fur, feathers and treasures – the remnants of a hard winter.  We watched our shortcut across the pond slowly melt away as we created new paths.  And most of all, it brings a (not-entirely!) quiet time to reflect.

We’ve had a great kickoff to the session and want to welcome all our new students!

Happy Spring!

Matt, Kim and the FNS team

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“Sap”cicles and other sweet adventures

Happy Spring Everyone, and welcome back (or for the first time!) to Forest and Nature School.  We had a great week at Bygone Days exploring our property and reaping some of nature’s sweet benefits!

All week long our main focus was Maple Syrup leaving students with first-hand experience and a better understanding of the science behind this Canadian staple, the parts of the process and set-up and some students now even know  how to identify Maple Trees that are good for tapping by their leaves (round edges).  And while our goal was to explore the Sugar Shack area, emergent interests took us in all sorts of directions!

After initial free-play and our core routines (smudge and check-ins), groups headed out on their adventure to Maple Forest.  All sort of routes were taken and sidetracks made and new things discovered.  Throughout the week students discovered along the way the hollow sound of pebbles skipping on ice, 4 different sets of tracks within ten steps, fish from the pond, butterfly sanctuaries (milkweed), our nature playground and much more.

And as student-led learning often goes, we also saw:

Sagas unfold as students tried to tackle Fossil Mountain;
Pulley systems set up to bring up rocks;
Hotels open in the big forest trees;
Games of camouflage and “person”hunt;
Whole systems of trade and barter;
Epic Spring snow slides;
The rediscovery of our last remaining snow cave from the Winter Session;
Millions of years old fossils;

And so much more!

To top it all off, groups were treated to a Maple Syrup treat over the fire to end the day and compare the sweetness of the syrup to that of the sap.  Some groups had pancakes, some “scramcakes” (scrambled pancakes) and others Maple Toffee on snow.

Next Week:
A reminder that there is NO SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, enjoy the Holiday!
For everyone else, we are diving into outdoor skills.  For our full schedule, click here.

Thanks!

The Forest School Team

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Imaginations running wild and splashing through the day.

With the wild and mild temperature, our Forest School turned into what seemed like one big giant puddle!  Students took full advantage of this and had a blast splashing in it, breaking ice, and getting stuck  in mud (you may have noticed their clothes…).

After reading “The Giving Tree” and finding our woolly bear caterpillar emerged for the warm day, we ventured out on a huge hike to Maple Forest for a sweet surprise.  After tasting some fresh maple sap, we were especially thankful to join Al at the sugar shack and get to experience (and help!) with the evaporation process of the sap!  This was a first for a lot of our students today and we dove in with so much excitement! We learned how to identify good maple trees to tap by looking at their leaves and additionally, we learned the subtle, but important, difference between rabbit and deer scat!

A lot happened while at Maple Forest and we noticed our usually trickling creek became a flowing river.  So naturally it was time to race sticks and make a beaver dam.  We even pretended it was all sap and we had encountered the mother load!  

In the afternoon, we spent some time building shelters, making fires in “The Fort” and letting our imaginations run free!

Thanks for sending your child prepared for the wet and slushy day today! Because of their preparedness, we were able to run, explore, learn and play all day today!

And a big Welcome to Aislinn, our new Forest School Teacher!

Cheers,

The Forest School Team

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Skating, Maple Tree Tapping and so much more!

We had another wonderful week at Forest School and quite the range in activities too!

Great Snowy Owl demonstration!

On Wednesday, students worked hard to clear off the ice rink and we enjoyed skating away the morning! We even had a lesson from a Snowy Owl, including some basic skating drills and tips on a variety of ways to stop. It was an awesome start to our day and had smiles all around!  The afternoon had us in our sit spots and by Lakeside Campsite for the majority of the time. Students enjoyed working together to create and build new structures (including bridges, coat racks, ninja stands and more). It’s amazing to see what unfolds when we just make time to play and explore! It was neat to see the little communities become established and imaginations take over.

Just getting some quality time in with nature!

Though the blue bird week wreaked havoc on the rink, the warm temperatures made for a sweet treat from Mother Nature… that’s right the maple trees are FLOWING! On Thursday we spent some quality morning time learning about how to tap maples (and drilling!) and of course enjoyed  some of the immediate perks that comes with helping out around the sugar shack.  Students loved the opportunity to taste some sap coming directly from the trees! What a cool and tasty experience!   By Friday, the temps had dropped and the sap was frozen, but nevertheless we had a tasty, icy treat!

We also spent Thursday and Friday playing mini sticks on the rink, enjoying our sits spots, building snow castles and snowmen, and playing some of our favourite group games (camouflage, ga-ga ball and fox vs rabbit!).

We built in sometime this week to brainstorm some really great options for our Student-Led day next week and are eager to see how it unfolds! Students worked well together, collaborating and idea-sharing to make some big and exciting plans.

Kim sends a big heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone for the love and support as she goes on maternity leave next week. She promises to visit when the little one arrives, especially if it’s as sunny as it was this week! And with that exciting announcement, we welcome our new teachers Krista, Aislinn, and Natasha! To learn more about them, check out their bios!

Thanks for checking in!
The Forest School Team

 

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Here sappy, sappy..

Hi Friends,

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.

See you all next week,

Krista and Neal

  

 

  

 

  

  

  

   

  

 

Pancake Tuesday (and Wednesday!)

Hey Friends,

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 called Sappy, 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!

See you next week,

Kim and Matt

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A picture is worth a thousand words…

Hi Friends!

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!

Thanks for checking in this week!

Krista and Neal

Check out our amazing pictures our kids took….

  

    

   

   

   

   

   

  

   

  

   

   

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot…

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot…

…nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”

Some wise words from Dr. Seuss which led to a lengthy discussion this week, after a reading and a dramatic interpretation of “The Lorax”.   It was the perfect story to build our day around: Trees, trees and more trees.   And what better way to start than a look how trees work, followed by our favourite game: Sappy, Sappy?

After our smudge and morning circle, each student adopted a tree in their sit spots by identifying it using a field guide, drawing and naming it, getting to know its leaves and bark and finding out an interesting fact about it.  Did you know that Willows originated in China? That Ash is a preferred wood for bats and hockey sticks? That Sumac can be used to make a drink similar to lemonade? Neither did all of us!  Afterwards, as a group we identified (and gave medallions to) a whole bunch of different tree species just outside our schoolhouse doors – Pines, Ashes, Aspens, Beeches, Cherries and much more.

The afternoon had us go on an epic exploratory hike to a new section of forest.  The students were able to put their knowledge to the test and identify many species along the way (“Looks like elephant legs, that’s a beech!”; “Round needles and looks like a Christmas tree – white spruce!”).   We ended near our sugar shack where we took a few minutes to do some yoga (Tues.), be tree “huggers” (blindfolded and using other senses to identify a tree) and create “murder mysteries” by uncovering (and imagining) what happened to some felled trees and how old they were at the time (Tues.).

At the end of the day, we had a fire and boiled some Cedar Tea (packed full of vitamin C – click here for recipe) with a little maple syrup from last year’s harvest of our Maple stand.  The students enjoyed this simple treat while students told stories to earn their storytelling bead (3 in total!).

We also gave out 4 Nature Lover beads over the two days!  Congrats!

Next Week:
The eagerly anticipated FIRE week!

Did you know that 3 beads can be prepared at home?

Storytelling – students prepare a legend/story/poem to be read at a fire
Teaching – your child will teach the other students something they are passionate about – for example we’ve had students teach about origami, composting, and birds – this can be something simple and anything at all!
Craft – anything creative and homemade that uses natural/recycled materials.  Just have your child bring it in and present it to us!

As the days are getting colder please remember to layer up!
Cheers,

Matt and Kim

The fire within (or “you had me at pancakes”)

Hey Folks, happy Spring!  And what a difference between Wednesday’s weather and Thursday freezing rain!

We learned all about fire this week, and are on our way to earning our fire bead.  First off, a trip to the local fire station where students got to explore the station, engines, and learn about protective equipment and fire safety.  Since we’ll be having lots of fires at Forest School, the students came prepared and eager with many questions to ask our local heroes.  (Don’t be surprised if you child comes home and checks all the fire alarms!)

After lunch, we were back outside learning the exact steps in fire building.  With journals in hand, students learned all about the things needed (heat, oxygen and fuel) to make a fire.  The students eagerly collected their tinder, kindling and logs, and in no time we had a nice teepee fire blazing.  Not even the freezing rain could stop our fire Thursday.

As a special treat, we cooked pancakes over the fire.  The students were more than thrilled to add the maple sugar and syrup from our sugar shack visit three weeks ago.  On Thursday, these came to be know as delicious “scram”cakes because we forgot the spatula.

This week also saw the implementation of two new systems: Our beads ceremony and sticker reward chart.  Students now earn stickers for various categories (leadership, respect, listening, etc) and when they fill their chart, they receive an incentive.

Beads (see core routines) will also be earned by students for developing both hard and soft skills.  Now we don’t normally send homework home with the students, but there are a couple opportunities for students to work on earning their beads at home – if they want.  Some the skills (fire, knots, etc) can always be practiced at home, but there are 2 beads that can be earned at home: the craft and storytelling beads.

The craft bead is ANYTHING creative the student wants to make and bring in and share with the class.  It could be a bird feeder, dream catcher, painting, ANYTHING!  Depending on what it is, we may even be able to all make one.

The storytelling bead is just that – telling a story/myth/legend/song/poem/anything around the fire to the group.

We know you are busy, and there is no time limit on this.  If your child finds the time, that’s great, but it’s not mandatory.

See you next week, let’s hope for some sun.

Happy Easter!

Matt and Kim

 

A sweet, sweet day

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