We had such a blast exploring this week! After learning the cardinal directions and compass basics, it was time for studying maps… and what better way than an all out East vs West game of capture the flag? Students divided territory, created boundaries and marked key locations on the map before they were set loose in the playing field. Teamwork, honesty, attack-defense strategy and some good physical endurance was the name of the game.
Afterwards, the students were challenged with mini-orienteering courses that looped back on themselves. All students excelled at this and were soon up against the “ultimate” orienteering challenge that spread property-wide. After finding their direction of travel and getting the “Red in the Shed”, students were off to the races. The group was able to complete this challenge with ease, and all this before lunch!
And they are off on the Orienteering Challenge!
Our next challenge would take us off property to the Eleventh Line trails for an afternoon of hiking and Geocaching. With the help of our GPS’s (a big thanks to Healthy Kids Community Challenge for lending us these!), we were able to uncover 2 Geocaches!
GPS in hand, off to find the treasure.
If you’ve never geocached, it’s a wonderful way to spend time outside. Think giant, worldwide scavenger hunt using GPS technology – it can even been done through an app on your phone or borrow one from the Collingwood Library! Check out geocaching.com.
We are pleased to announce that EVERYONE earned their Travel Beads this week! We also gave out 1 Teaching Bead for a lesson on animal calls, two Reflection Beads, and a Nature Lover Bead – Congrats!
Next Week: Survival Skills! If you have any (preferably) plastic containers that can be used as a fire kit please send it (or them) along! Thanks! (Small peanut butter jars are best as they screw shut and are waterproof, but anything similar will do!)
This week at Forest School we took on the Suzuki Superhero Challenge… the goal of which was to gain a deeper understanding of certain rights that everyone in the world should have. The day was broken down into different parts: the Right to Clean Water, the Right to Clean Air, the Right to Nutritious Food and the Right to a Healthy Environment. This led to many thoughtful conversations combined with experiential activities.
Students participated in a visualization activity to connect with their prior knowledge of Earth, leading into collaborative presentations used to reflect a healthy environment and brainstorm ways to protect it. They were then challenged to a water relay race (intentionally unfair) that shed light on water issues throughout the country and abroad. This experience led to a particularly thoughtful debrief and many wonderful insights from the students. Our air quality lesson had students juggling ping pong balls and balloons to represent various modes of sustainable transportation and pollution, while our (again unfair) apple relay brought awareness of the significance of local consumption and the energy required to bring food to our table.
Of course throughout the day we had our core routines, including free-play and time spent in our sit spots. Students created their very own Enviro-Superheroes and powers (“Mud Man”, “Wonder Water”, “Flamingo Girl”!). Finally the end of the day had us experience first hand how animals fit into the environment by playing “Survival” – a new favourite game that we’ll be playing again for sure in the future!
Congrats to our first Reflection Bead recipient this week for 15 journal entries, and 1 craft bead!
Next Week:
Travel day!!! We’re gonna have some fun learning about mapping, compasses and the GPS!
Parent’s Reminder:
The days are getting much colder and the weather can change quite quickly. Please ensure your child is dressed for anything and has back-up clothes! In the near future we will be building our fire kits. If you could please bring in small plastic containers with lids, that would be very helpful!
Hard to believe we are more than half way through the trimester! What awesome weather we had this week (especially compared to last!) for jumping into our creative minds with Art Attack!
We started off the day as always with some free play, smudging and morning circle – except this time a number of students (and the teachers!) took advantage of one last day to wear their super creative Halloween costumes. From ladybugs, to anonymous, to zombies and even someone who “lost a fight to a tree”, we had it all. (Oh and that strange guy in the pictures? That’s Matt sans beard.)
What better way to kick off the day than with some physical literacy to bring down the sugar levels a wee bit. We jumped into a giant relay game of Tic-Tac-Toe, followed by our ultimate team challenge of “Lava Crossing”. This combines planning and strategics, communication, balance, teamwork, and a lot of patience to achieve the desired goal of crossing the lava river. Wednesday’s students even set up their own course during free play!
After snack, we headed out with colour tags to see just how colourful nature can be. We usually think of nature as green, brown and blue, but our students discovered that when we look closely we can see hundreds of different colours and shades. With that in mind, we put our creative hats on and headed out to our sit spots. While there, students made rough drafts of a painting they would like to make. Afterwards, they were given a canvas to create their masterpieces. The only catch? It had to be created solely using natural materials. Grapes for purple (complete with a grape pounding station), dandelions for yellow, dirt for brown, grass rubbings for green – the children got very creative. Twigs were suddenly being used as trees or frames, or even stands for the canvas itself. It was neat to watch all the ideas unfold.
After lunch (and some intense stilt walking), we headed to our fire pit where students put their fire skills to the test. We listened to a couple stories (congrats to our Bead recipients!) and made some walking sticks. We learned how to make a comfortable handle out of cord (congrats to the teaching bead given out for this!), carved some images or designs, and painted to our hearts content. Tuesday’s group even had time to make homemade play-dough!
We ended the day with a special Halloween treat – some Fair Trade chocolate. The students briefly learned about the importance of this mindful consumption. Find more information at http://fairtrade.ca/
Next week:
We dive into Environmental Science!
Check out the pictures below and have a great week,
We won’t expose the student who gave us the quote for the title of this blog, but he (or she) was referring to some of the ancient white cedars out at Metcalfe Rock. Specifically the “Braided Root Tree” which grew out of the cliff, then had its roots devour an old fallen tree to make a unique braided root from the cliff to the ground – ask your child about it!
After playing around with a slingshot and uncovering some of Matt’s ancient rock collection, we jumped in the van and headed out to the Kolapore Uplands, home of Metcalfe Rock. This epic piece of the Niagara Escarpment is great for climbing, hiking, biking and (you guessed it) caving. Fall is an especially beautiful time of year up there, though can bring a mix of conditions. We had some drastically different weather from Tuesday to Wednesday. (Tuesday saw snow and luckily we had a fire to keep our toes warm!)
After setting up a tarp shelter and getting a fire going, we got all geared up and ready to head into the caves. This year, we took it up a level and headed for the amazing Ice Cave. It’s reputation held true – we found some ice inside. All the students were incredibly brave crawling and climbing their way into the cave! Some students even made it all the way to the bottom of the Ice Cave and got to drink its’ pristine water. Others respected their own limits (our old adage of challenge-by-choice, which is brave in and of itself) and chose different paths through the rock maze. We even tackled the dreaded “Birth Canal” with 100% success (even Matt fit through!).
The afternoon was a chance to explore and play games in the surrounding forest. Some students got really into fire-building and whittling, while others built shelters, giant piles of leaves to jump in and sought out lichen to sort through. With so much to do, students could be seen balancing on logs and trying not to fall in the “lava”, while others opted to play some classic games like camouflage – free play is such a wonderful thing to watch happen.
Metcalfe has been a really special place for us and we were thrilled to see it through new sets of eyes as we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones and into adventure. A big, big thanks to Krista and the Thornbury crew who joined us on Wednesday, and brought along a special treat – popcorn over the fire!
We got back just in the nick of time to the school, and weren’t able to give out beads. But we wanted to mention that 1 Nature Lover Bead and 2 Peer Support Beads will be handed out next week!
Next Week:
ART ATTACK! Bring your creativity! We will both be wearing costumes to extend the Halloween Celebrations, so if your child(ren) want to, please do so! Maybe put your costume over all of your bundled layers!
FYI There’s a Fright Night Happening at Bygone Days over the weekend put on by Elephant Thoughts. It might be really spooky to go!
What an interesting and incredible sight to arrive to on Tuesday at Forest School. Seems the storm left a bit of damage on our area with willows, aspens and more knocked over across the property. Luckily, they fell in good places and no one was hurt, or major damage done.
The students had a blast with the debris though! We jumped in to help clean up the mess and made a massive pile of downed branches and leaves, which later turn into a fort, and then, later still, turned into a full on shelter–make the best of a bad situation! (A really good moment for us as teachers was when the students were handing us branches and telling us the type of tree it was without any prompting–some things did stick from our tree lesson last week!)
We eventually began our day as planned with fire! Our first task was a lesson on the needs of fire (oxygen, heat and fuel) and different kinds of fuel (tinder, kindling and bigger wood). After learning the basics it was time to put it into practice at our fire pit. Of course when we arrived, a tree had fallen over it!
After the clean-up, we talked about different styles of fires, fire safety and LNT principles. We then went over the steps to build a tee-pee fire. With the help of everyone we got it going fairly quickly and had some storytellers tell some stories to earn their beads. This culminated in a “test” at the end of the day where Snowy Owls were paired up with Painted Turtles and given the task to prepare and create a fire. Students could also visit the “store” and if they answered a fire related question, were given special materials such as birch bark, wood shavings and more. Everyone was able to do it (even with some hard winds on Tuesday!) and earned their Fire Beads. Congrats! They did so well in fact we had time leftover for a huge game of Capture the “Fire” (Flag).
We also found time this week to head out to Curries Farm Market and pick out a pumpkin for each group. We carved out the pumpkins together and saved some seeds to fry up and put in our seed library for the spring.
Congrats to all our bead earners (22 Fire Beads, 4 Storytelling), and a very special congrats to our first Leadership Bead earned!
Next Week:
FIELD TRIP! Dress warm and in layers because we are going into the caves and learning all about Natural Landscapes at Metclafe Rock. Gloves would be a good idea, too!
We are also planning to have a bit of a Halloween Day the week of Halloween (Nov 1 and 2). We invite the students to don their costumes one more time if they’d like!
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,
We started off our day today with a group game called Kubb (pronounced: Coob). Essentially it’s viking chess – a great target game. Unfortunately it’s way to complicated to explain the rules – so here’s a link to what it is. After our intense game, we did our smudge, morning circle and sit spots. Then it was time to enter the wonderful world of bugs!
After learning about where bugs live (underground, on the ground and in the sky), we explored our site with magnifying glasses and guidebooks in hand, and in a very short while were able to identify over 30 different species of bugs. Everywhere we looked there was a mini-world of insects unfolding right in front of us. (The Wednesday group varied slightly in that they also had a chance to do a pond study as they didn’t get to it last week.)
We also learned about soil today and have started a project using worms, compost and the different layers. You may have noticed your child come home with a yummy Soil Sundae? Or maybe it didn’t make it all the way there.
Speaking of making things, we wanted to spend some time exploring what insects can do for us. And what better insect to use than a honey bee? It was amazing to see the knowledge the students already had and were able to share about bees. Did you know there are over 20,000 different kinds of bee species in the world? After role playing the life of a bee, we made chap stick and hand balm from locally sourced beeswax, organic coconut oil, shea butter, and a little peppermint to give it a scent. Pretty simple! We did this over a camp stove, but you can do it at home too! For a complete recipe, please click here.
Thanks to Healthy Kids Challenge Collingwood, the students also had a chance to create GIANT bugs, bug hotels, bug amusement parks and bug castles with the imagination playground. Check out the masterpieces in the pictures below!
A big congratulations to our bead recipients this week. 2 Teaching Beads: one to a student who brought in their birding field guide taught us how to use a guide and showed us all the birds she had seen in her own backyard; and one for a lesson on composting. 2 Craft beads were also given out for an interesting project on compost in a jar.
Next Week: We’re going to have some fun with trees!! Please remember to dress warm and have some extra layers – we’ve had some unusually awesome weather this fall, but who knows how long it’ll last.
This week Kim and I were away for the Wednesday group as we were on paddling trips with our other school (hence why this post is late), so this post will focus on what happened on Tuesday. Luckily, our Wednesday group was paired up with our Thornbury School and a blog post about their day can be found here. A big thanks to Jen and Neal for stepping in in our place! They are phenomenal outdoor educators and I know Wednesday’s group really enjoyed their experience.
Our day started off as usual (a smudge and morning circle) and then we were of to our Heathcote location for a day on the Beaver river. When we got there, we were able to explore the awesome gardens and new outdoor classroom. The students spent a good chunk of time exploring and challenging themselves on the rope swing, climbing wall (which is actually a tree) and tasting some of the veggies in the garden.
After a few team challenges, it was time to hit the river. Some of the Snowy Owls challenged themselves by opting to kayak, while the others eagerly jumped into canoes. In total, we paddled 3.5 km of the winding Beaver River. We spotted all sorts of wild creatures along the way; lots of birds and small mammals… and even a painted turtle!
After our return and quick lunch, we jumped into our pond study. Students grabbed their nets and buckets and dove right in. They found the usual – crayfish and minnows – but were also able to catch and identify different species of bugs and snails.
The day was incredibly fun and chock-full of learning. A picture is worth a thousand words, so be sure to scroll down and see for yourself. A big thanks to Jacob, our awesome Free Spirit guide who paddled along with us, and all the other guys at Heathcote that lent a hand (Joel our boat master; and Bryan, who gave an impromptu lesson on gardening and free pick at his ground cherries.) Overall, a very successful first outing!
Next Week: Time to uncover those creepy crawly bugs!
With the autumn looming this week we celebrated our “Fall Harvest” at Forest School. The whole day revolved around harvesting food, working as a community and sharing a meal together.
We searched the property and to our pleasant surprise were able to not only uncover a few awesome pear trees, but also some apple trees scattered throughout the forest. Preserving was the word of the day so we set to dehydrating the pears we picked from the tree to make ourselves some chewy fruit snacks. This was a big hit among students!
During an exploratory hike around the property, the Snowy Owls (with the help of some keen Painted Turtles), were able to fill a bag of apples – and discover sour wild grapes, red clover, Queen Anne’s Lace [wild carrot], and a patch of strawberries for the spring too! Even through hardship (a journey through the newly named “prickly” mountain – full of thistles!) we trekked on and were later rewarded with 100% pure, local apple sauce prepared with love over the fire. All the students were able to bring a jar home, so be sure to try it!
Our final project today was to create “Stone Soup” over the fire. We would like to send out a big thanks to all students who brought in some home grown (or neighbour/grandparent grown!) veggies. Our veggies included kale, cucumber, tomatoes (from our School Garden from last year!), garlic, potatoes, onions and much more. The soup was a HUGE success and one of the tastier ones we’ve ever had. All students had a hand in the prep work and the cooking and therefore all earned their Cooking Beads! Congratulations.
In addition to the food, our day focused on the 7 Grandfather Teachings. Using legends and discussions, students learned about Love, Truth, Honesty, Humility, Respect, Wisdom and Bravery. They made connections in their own lives and at Forest School (in fact our whole sticker system is based on these Teachings). Furthermore, students spent a good amount of time in their sit spots, balancing on our slackline, and working together to build a brand new fire pit area (as our old one was invaded by poison ivy)! We even had time to set up our own seed library for use next year. What a busy and productive day!
Congrats to our first ever “Teaching Bead” recipient for an awesome lesson in making origami. And a big welcome to our two new (but returning) students!
Next Week:
FIELD TRIP! We are going to be paddling next week and have a water focused theme. Please send along a bathing suit for your children so they can enjoy the water. Boats, paddles, and life jackets will be provided but if you have your own PFD feel free to bring it. Drop -off and pick-up will be as usual at Bygone Days!
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.
