Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Helping Hands

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Hey Folks!

Happy Solstice! After our core routines this week and a brainstorm on teamwork, our days differed immensely in what student-interests led us to. We book-ended all days with sage and sit spots in the morning, and a fire at the end, but otherwise they were so unique, let’s sum them up separately.

TUESDAY

We had some eager helpers on Tuesday and started off by weeding the garden and planting some tomato plants in anticipation of our Fall Harvest next school year. The majority of our day was spent “farming” and building gardens in our sit spots, developing clay factories (which turned into clay all over the place!), and harvesting wild edibles to eat in a salad. Some lucky adventurers even gathered some wild strawberries!

Students also built a brand new fire pit, complete with rock ring which we used for our end of the day fire. Despite the rain (or maybe because of?…), we still had a great time. After a game of Capture the Flag, we even had time to hang our homemade bat house SW facing high in Willow Tree… we’ll see if anything moves in!

(PS – since we were on a camp trip, we didn’t have time to put up photos for Tuesday’s canoeing last week, so if you scroll to the very bottom, you’ll find some there.)

Wednesday

Our Wednesday class dove into what they love best – catching aquatic creatures and manipulating the movement of water with waterfalls, rapids and dug out riverbeds. Everyone had a job in this project – digger, dammer, dumper and more. And what a lucky day we had with the discovery of many 4+ leaf clovers!!!

We headed out to our sit spots, and student-interest kept us there for most of the morning. Like Tuesday, we saw students dive into the clay market (quite literally!) and create a whole bunch of infrastructure and objectives. Others could be found trying their luck at fishing (no bites this time), collecting ample amounts of wild strawberries, transplanting wild edibles into their personal gardens, and carving cutlery from wood.

Another reoccurring theme throughout the day was ants and their colonies and nests. We had a lengthy and great debate about whether or not to capture some ants and create our own ants in a jar – and in the end, everyone agreed that we should leave these fellas be. Later in the day the students even created an epic ant home (or mansion) and the Painted Turtle group sit spot! And speaking of which, this area had quite the facelift with everyone pitching in to create a new reading circle with stumps and boards, and cleaning all the garbage along the way.

A big thanks to our volunteer parent, Jamila, who lent some helping hands of her own today!

Thursday

The pond, as usual, was a huge hit on Thursday and we were able to identify new species of critters that lurked under the leaves. After our check-ins (and by popular demand) we played some team games including our favourite, Survival, where students learned that it’s not just humans who work together and lend a helping hand. Afterwards (when the rain came briefly), we laid out and drew up plans for a future “Nature” playground that we want to develop at the site! Students came up with some really practical, feasible and awesome ideas! We hope to put some of them in place in the near future.

Before embarking on our afternoon, we held an impromptu funeral for “Max” the toad, a poor fella we came across today. This was topped off with a great rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb on the the recorder, played by one of our students. Throughout the day we visited some new places, including the reading circle created by Wed’s group and the fire pit created by Tues’ group, where student’s created their very own imaginative stories to share with each other around the fire.

Alas, some sad news – we say goodbye to Krista this week as she won’t be here next week! A HUGE THANKS for all you do for the students and the program!

Congrats to our Beads Recipients: 2 Tracking beads, a handful of Sit Spot bead, 2 Colouring beads, 2 Curiosity bead, 2 Music beads, 3 Littlerless Lunch beads, and 4 storytelling beads!

Next Week: Hard to believe it’s the last day of the year! We’d like to invite all families to our final wrap-up at 3:15 pm at Bygone Days. It will take about 20 minutes.

Cheers,

Matt, Kim and Krista

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Photo’s from TUES group last week:

Kayak or Canoe…..

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Hi Everyone,

We enjoyed another awesome field trip this week to the Beaver River located in Heathcote. This river is a local favourite of ours, especially if we want to see an abundance of wild life!

Each week at Forest School we are reminded of how much of a caring community we have, and field trips bring out the best in us! After our morning routines each class bounced into the vans anticipating the excitement of our last trip before summer break. Kayaking and Canoeing were the options for the day, and while some felt more comfortable leading their own boat, others took turns paddling and looking for wild life. Some of the amazing finds were painted turtles, leeches, birds, frogs, slugs, toads, and snakes.

Our week also brought mixed weather, which didn’t slow anyone down! Within our afternoon our students took advantage of what the Heathcote property had to offer. Some students ate wild strawberries, worked on their slack lining skills, climbed the willow trees and had an epic frog hunt! Our students showed off their creativity by building lego towers and life sized lego men and even created a student led game called “capture” (which was a huge hit). We also took a crack at attempting to solve some of our wooden puzzles, which turns out are a lot harder than they look. 3 out of 5 were accomplished!

A HUGE thanks to Carley and Tamara for stepping in this week for Matt and Kim! We would love to have you back!

Next week – Helping hands!

See you next week!

Matt, Kim, Krista, Carley and Tamara

And they say kids don’t like vegetables…

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Hey All,

What an amazing week we had exploring ! The students had the opportunity to spend time looking at the forest through a different lens – and a delicious lens at that! Our energy this week focused around the question: What can we eat??? We brought in Brian, a local wild edible and plant ID expert, to help us uncover the treasures that were literally growing right in front of us!

Our morning objective was to get out and ID/harvest as many different types of edible plants as possible. And over three days, we grew quite the impressive list:

Dandelion (or as Thursday group came to learn the “Pusteblumen” in German)
Wild Carrots
Grape Tendrils (or the “arms” of the grape – sourly delicious)
Cattails
Clover (but not too much!)
Thistle!
Bladder Campion
Daisy
Bass Wood
Cedar
Catnip
Pineapple Weed
Leeks
Burdock
Curly Dock
Strawberries
Pepper Grass
(GIANT) Asparagus
..and much more!

Medicinal:
Plantain – chew it up and put in on cuts, stings and bites
Yarrow – helps stop bleeding (and nose bleeds!)
Willow – like Tylenol for toothaches or cankers

We spent the afternoon by the lake, where epic tunnels were dug, gardens were built, clay factories were opened and overall people were just covered in mud – including a sweet puppy visitor on Thursday. We wrapped up our day by gathering around the fire, where we cooked up some delicious wild veggie stir-fries, with a salad as an appetizer, and shared some steeped loose leaf teas from foraged greens and roots. Things taste so much better when you collect them yourself!

Congratulation Bead Recipients:
A whole bunch of Nature Lovers, 2 Al’s Beads and 1 Cooking Bead!

A BIG thanks to Brian! He brought an enormous amount of knowledge and great energy to the groups, and made the learning so accessible and inspiring for the kids. (He does edible nature walks as part of his job, if you are interested in doing one or you’d like to get in touch with him, send us an email – it’s totally worth it!)

Next week:
We are paddling!!! Please remember bathing suits and a towel. We’ll have everything else, but if you want you can BYO-PFD. (and water shoes are good choice!).

Reminder: Days are getting HOT! Please remember to bring a water bottle and a hat to protect from the sun. Sunglasses is a good idea, too.

We’ll leave you with a quote from one of our student’s:

“It’s so strange. It’s like I see the world and plants differently now.”

Happy Harvesting,

Krista, Matt and Kim

You Rock.

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Hey Everyone,

We had an awesome field trip this week to Metcalfe Rock in the Kolapore Uplands. This is one of our favourite places to visit for hiking, caving and best of all, CLIMBING! This week rocked!

There’s not much for us to write about this week except how proud we are of our students for stepping outside their comfort zones and trying a challenging, risky and new (for some people) activity. As teachers, we are thrilled to see everyone give it their best and encourage each other along the way. It’s quite the supportive community we’ve all built here at Forest School.

After our initial round of climbing, students had free, exploratory play in the beautiful surrounding forest. Some built shelters, others played one of our favourite games: camouflage, and some even made our now infamous leek and trout lily salad. A few eager students even spent their time climbing some more routes.

In total, 6 different climbs were conquered by our climbers. Check out the photos below, they say a thousand words. (If you’d like a better digital copy, send us an email at fsforestschool@gmail.com).

Congrats to our Bead Recipients: Everyone earned an Explorer Bead and a Bravery Bead!

Oh, and if you’re wondering why your child(ren) may have come home with a new special rock, it may have been inspired by our story: Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor

Next Week: Wild Edibles… yummy!

Happy Trails,

Kim, Matt and Krista

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“Bee”ware!

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Hey Everyone!

We had a good week celebrating and exploring the wonderful lives of bees with all the students. After our core routines (and some lessons on Poison Ivy ID – that time of year…) we jumped into discussion on bees. There was a lot of prior bee knowledge from our students. We looked at needs, benefits and risks as a class. The students really had a solid understanding of just how important bees are to the environment and food production – and also what we can do to help them.

Throughout the day, we jumped into the roles of bees in two separate games. The first was a spin on a classic game that we like to call Capture the “Honey”, with two bee colonies competing against each other in what is essentially the classic Capture the flag (which everyone always loves!) The second was a macro-model we dubbed “Bee”ware, where students became a bee and had to maneuver through “pesticide” and “loss of habitat” areas without getting caught in order to get the sweet, sweet nectar. What better way to learn about bees, than to become a bee! We shared many great reflections and insights together after playing these activities.

We also had the chance to get up close and personal with our magnifying glasses and examine real nests and honeycombs. And afterwards, we tried some very sweet local honey.

In the afternoon, we had our daily experiential time where students decide what they’d like to do. We saw a large variety of activities over these three days – some students built towers, carved spoons, collected seeds, others caught hundreds of tadpoles, followed bees from flower to flower or made up stories and games. We even had one group build a bat house (inspired and led by one of our students!) while another opted to play more “Bee”ware…. Oh and our new giant teeter-totter!

Towards the end of the day, we used another product from bees – beeswax. We put together a camp stove, melted down the ingredients, and made some chapstick (check it out under “Recipes from our classes”). On a couple days we even had time to make cedar tea with honey in it.

Congrats Bead Recipients:
4 Litterless lunch
1 Craft
4 Colouring
2 Sit Spots

Next Week:
ROCK CLIMBING at Metcalfe Rock! All gear will be provided! Chances are it will be buggy, so please wear layers!

All in all, a sweet day!

Matt, Kim and Krista

PS – Did you know that storytelling is an integral part of our program at Forest School and we often tell and read them together? This week we read a great book called Mr. Bumble – By Kim Kennedy

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Go(by!) fish!

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Wow. There sure have been some incredible changes around the land at Bygone Days. Students have really taken to ensuring that all of our nature-tasks, like filling bird feeders and watering plants, are looked after upon arrival. This noteworthy interest and initiative certainly compliments their ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship and helps build that awesome connection with the land! And lately, they are keen to jump into all of the treats that Mother Earth gives us in the spring…especially by the pond! Throughout the week, we saw tadpoles, frogs, water bugs, leeches and, our personal favourite: the courageous painted turtles sunbathing on logs (and even venturing out to share in some sit spots!) Students love this up-close experience with nature and seem to have developed a deep connection – it is a beauty to see it unfold!

We traveled off-site for another field trip this week – the ever so desired fishing day! What a beautiful day to spend by the bay! We learned a lot about different casting and jigging techniques, re-familiarized ourselves with fishing knots, explored with all sorts of lures, witnessed some creative minnow traps, hooked our own worms… and became especially close with the high-density goby, an invasive bottom feeding fish. We had some first-time catches, teasing nibbles, and a lot of patience for the great bambino! On Thursday, we headed back a little early to try our luck on the big pond at the school – no catches but a few nibbles!

Students really enjoyed trying their hands at fishing this week and after our awesome learning experience, all students earned their fisher-person bead! A special shout out to a rod-rescue mission by a Snowy Owl on Wednesday and an epic “catch of the day” by Matt (it was a fly away t-shirt!).

Additional beads earned:
1 Sit Spot Bead
4 Reflection Beads
2 Nature Lover Beads
2 Bravery beads

Three Housekeeping Items:
– With the incredibly warm weather upon us, we would like to remind parents to help students pack and remember their water bottles and hats.
– We have some sun screen and bug spray, but if you have a particular favourite, please bring it!
– As tempting as it might be to wear flip flops, please ensure that your child also has proper running shoes (rain boots for ponds, if you’d like!) for all of our busy day adventures (it’s poison ivy and tick season and we want to be extra careful). Closed-toed paddling sandals with heel straps are a great all around shoe.
-As the days get hotter, please send your kids along with a swimsuit as we may have opportunities to jump in the water.

Lastly, an additional reminder to register soon for next year, if you are interested, as it is beginning to fill up.

Thanks again! See you next week, as we take a closer look at bees!

Happy Trails,

Matt, Kim and Krista

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Hikes for days..

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Hi everyone!

While Matt and Kim are away, Forest School gets off property to play! Through out our week all of our students embarked on two brand new trails located on the Bruce Trail called the Pretty River Trail and Loree Forest. We also welcomed with open arms our substitute teachers Carly and Noa. We had amazing weather, which gave our students positive vibes and lots of energy each day. After our core routines and student led games, our kids started the day with lots of energy and ended with tired legs and great memories. Check it out!

TUESDAY

We sprung the question “How has Forest School changed your life outside our classroom?” With some time in our sit spots to reflect our students had some very deep answers varying from improved self confidence, bravery, pushing comfort zones and in general just happier! It’s always great to see where we had started and how far we’ve come. After our morning student led games, our day was full on! While hiking in a sea of Trout Lilies and Trilliums, we came across Fox holes, Toads, Mud monsters, Spiders and tested our river jumping abilities. A huge Thank you to Rowan for bringing in a special gift for his fellow classmates, which was bubbles, and who doesn’t love bubbles.

WEDNESDAY

We brought out one of our favourite games – Kubb! We also spent some time building our sit spots and reflecting on our past week. Our Painted Turtles even came across a Bat flying around, deciding to name it seemed appropriate so Patty or Batman were the final two contenders, though we never did come to a conclusion. Everyone was eager to head out on our hike, which led us to familiar plants and animals. Students loved getting dirty today with all the clay we found, so much so that they turned into clay makers. Some of our masterpieces were bowls, cups and sculptures. We also found snow! Students loved “skiing” down the hill, and didn’t even mind the hike back up!

THURSDAY

Our students we excited and super prepared for our field trip, so we sprung into the van and headed to Loree Forest first thing. We challenged the kids to find just 1 Salamander, and they blew us away with a total of 60! We couldn’t believe it, but it’s true! We are so proud of all the dedication they had, and all of the excited screams never got old. We also discovered many new bugs, plants and some of the juiciest worms we have ever seen. If the kids were not making wild salads, they were playing with mud, snow and just enjoying our hike!

Congratulations to all our students who earned Respect, Love and Humility stickers! We also want to thank Carly and Noa for subbing in for Matt and Kim this week, we would love to have you back!

Next Week – By popular demand – Fishing!

Until next week,

Krista, Kim and Matt, along with Carly and Noa

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If we build it… they will have fun.

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Hey Everyone,

Some of our favourite days here at Forest School are our “Project Days”. In the past, we’ve built gardens, free libraries, kites, hammocks and much more. We often come into these days with a few ideas about projects we can work on – and as usual are blown away with where the students take it and the ideas they bring to the table. The Snowy Owl students were eager to get a lot of work done on their sit spots, and the painted turtles created secret forts of their own. A lot was accomplished over the past three days – some really cool individual projects, and other bigger group projects, too. Here are the highlights broken down by day:

Tuesday

Tuesday we had on and off again rain, which meant we had some time for indoor projects to do. Some students built massive lego towers, some painted our Kubb set, and others carved spoons. We even made a brand new bow-drill for the class. Some students collected a variety of wild edibles, took everyone’s order off the menu and served us a special treat. When we were able to take advantage of the dryer moments outside, we worked together as group and created a brand new rope swing at our campsite!

Our new bow drill

Wednesday

We had a beautiful sunny day Wednesday and took full advantage of it. While the Painted Turtles were off creating their “secret” place, Snowy Owls were trying to catch minnows in a trap and manipulate a flowing stream with dams and pipes – all before morning snack. After a bunch of time in setting up our sit spots, some fishing and finding a real painted turtle, students got dirty with clay and created a pottery factory. The afternoon was spent checking our trap, painting with natural materials, and trying out the bow-drill from Tuesday’s group. We also added a balance beam to our new obstacle course which included a lot of rope-swinging.

Thursday

The rain held off!!! Our big project today was building a couple potato planters – using straw, chicken wire and soil, students dove in and got dirty. There were also some new additions made to the rope swing and we spent some time in our sit spots. Some students even made a fire without a match! The afternoon was spent carving – mostly spoons, but some spears, arrows and bows as well.

Congratulations to all the bead recipients (and quite a lot!): 8 sit spot beads, 1 curiosity bead, 4 craft beads, 1 firekeeper bead, 1 Al’s bead, 1 peer-support bead, 2 show and tell beads and 4 storytelling beads!

Next Week: We are headed off-site for a hike! Kim and Matt will be away, but we will have amazing teachers (including Krista!) filling in for them.

Registration to the public opens up May 5th, please be sure to send us your intentions (fsforestschool@gmail.com) to ensure your spot asap!

Thanks,

Kim, Matt and Krista

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What do Turkey Nests, Sun Fires, Snapping Turtles and Leeks have in common?…

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…Forest School!!

Hey Everyone,

This week the classes learned all about Ecosystems. After our core routines, we started off by coming up with a working definition of what Ecosystems are and how they connect all over the world. It was awesome to lean on the prior-knowledge of our students – we’ve got a clever bunch!

After our lessons, we threw on our scientist hat and headed for the field to make observations and record data. Our objective was to mark off a rectangular section of “ecosystem”, measure it and search for all living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) things. The students jumped to the task with magnifying glasses in-hand and found some really cool things – robin eggs, insect eggs and nests, snails galore, mushrooms, and much more. After a “museum walk” to view everyone’s site, it was quite evident that there’s much more than meets the eye in a relatively small area.

After telling a legend, the afternoon had us exploring more ecosystems as we set out on a hike to the far edges of our property. More specifically, we were looking at the biodiversity between ecosystems, in the ecotones. It’s awesome what you can find when you slow down and take a look – the remains of a Northern Flicker, a Turkey nest, edible trout lilies, and that’s just to name a few.

You never know what you’re going to get at Forest School and different days saw many different things happen this week:

TuesdaY

Students were really engaged with ring toss yet again. They also got a chance to become the food chain in a serious rock, paper, scissors competition. This group was the first group to discover the remains of the Northern Flicker (and they chose to leave the beautiful feathers there for the other groups to see – yay LNT principles and nature lovers!). A big portion of them also started work on carving projects, and as always enjoyed some time in their sit spots.

Wednesday

A really cool thing happened on Wednesday – during our exploration one of the students noticed his magnifying glass warmed up his hand. And from there we naturally had to make a fire from it. So we tried and lo and behold, the char cloth caught quick. So we tried other materials – paper, birch bark, tree resin, wood – to see what would happen. We eventually were able to make a fire only using the sun!!!

During a game of camouflage, this group also accidentally (and quite literally) stumbled upon a turkey nest. The mama turkey flew off and we quickly left the area in hopes that she’ll return.

THURSDAY

Wow! What a hot day! So nice we even had to cool down in the spring, and had our first real day where we could take our shoes off this Spring. (And the lightning storms held off just for us!)

The students on Thursday jumped into the roles of Producers, Consumers and Decomposers for a better understanding of food chains. On a sadder note, we experienced this cycle first hand after discovering that our mallard nest was attacked by a hungry predator. We worked through these heavy feelings with the group and realized that this loss is an important part of the food chain. Soon after, we were treated when we discovered a healthy baby of another species – a snapping turtle!

Of course you may have noticed some stinky breath coming from your child after school this week… Tuesday we came across a Leek patch and of course the Wed and Thurs groups had to try!

Congrats to our bead recipients: 3 Leadership Beads, 2 Curiosity Bead, 3 Show and Tell, and 1 Craft bead (for homemade charcloth!)

Next week: Projects!!! We’re going to let our imaginations run wild.

Cheers,

Your Forest School Team (Matt, Kim and Krista)

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Jays vs Juncos

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Hey Everyone,

Wow! What a fun-filled week at Forest School. Our focus was on birds this week and we had just the right mix of rainy days and sunshine to see them keeping busy and singing songs… though Thursday students might not agree with the sunshine part! Our bird feeders from last week welcomed new feathered friends and signs of spring were all around us.

We had a wide range of fun throughout the day, starting with an awesome invention of “ring toss” (a combination of dodge ball and volleyball), and perhaps our new favourite game, “Jays vs Junco’s”. For Jays vs. Junco’s, most students acted as Junco’s foraging food, discreetly bringing it back to their nest to feed their young. Their objective was to hide it from the pesky Blue Jays, who were ransacking all of the nests they could find for their own needs! There were decoy nests, distress calls between Juncos, and a lot of laughs!

All decked out with binoculars and field books, our students wandered around the property with a Bird BINGO card in hand, looking for all types of birds, doing all types of things! Birds perching, flying, building nests, birds with long legs and tails, super colourful feathers, or a more camouflaged look – we saw it all! After gaining a few tips in observation (nature voice and fox-feet) and fine-tuning our eyes and ears, we set out for a hike around the big pond in an attempt to see (and hear) some more action. And that we did! Turkey Vultures, Killdeers, Chipping Sparrows, Robins, Common Grackles, FISH (3 dead, but some alive!), frogs, snails, caterpillars, another duck nest with 6 eggs and more! One day, we even had an impromptu memorial for Chippy, our little chipping sparrow that sadly must have collided into a window. Sometimes we work through big feelings and meaningful events at Forest School and we are always impressed with student’s thoughtfulness, wisdom and empathy during these times.

Students continue to LOVE spending time in their sit spots. This week, the Snowy Owls had a challenge to create dialogue between birds and record their conversations. Needless to say, with their incredible imaginations, students came up with some creative story lines! After identifying characteristics of birds, the Painted Turtles were tasked with the challenge of eating with “beaks” and were required to fill a “nest” with birdseed… using chopsticks! On Thursday, all students rose to the challenge of becoming migrating geese working together to take their flying V south. Along the way, they learned of the struggles faced by birds and some of them didn’t make it all the way to the end.

It sure was a wonderful week to be listening to and watching our bird friends! A big congratulations to the students who earned an Al’s bead for their thoughtfulness and good friendship, and other students who earned their Show and Tell beads this week! We also gave out a special Nature Lover bead to a curious birder!

Next Week:
We will be learning about ecosystems!

Reminder:
Please dress for the weather and bring an extra set of clothes, including a water bottle!

See you next week,

Krista, Matt and Kim

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