Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

And we’re off!

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Hey Folks!

A big welcome to all our new students this year and a big welcome back to all our Forest School returners! Every week, we’ll be posting a summary and photos here of all the adventures our Snowy Owls and Painted Turtles get up to. It is our hope to try and capture all those moments of exploration, learning and good old fashioned fun on here to share with you.

We (Kim and Matt) are privileged to be the Tuesday and Wednesday teachers for the Collingwood branch of Free Spirit Forest School. Although we have a basic outline we follow each day, one of the greatest things about emergent learning is we never know where it is going to take us. And thus you will certainly read about slight variations in our days.

This week our focus was on getting to know our school house, the land we are using, our learning community and our daily routines. After creating our nature medallions, we started our day off like we will every week with the students participating in a smudging ceremony using white sage. We do this to honour the cultural history of the area as well as cleanse ourselves of negativity in order to set the tone for the day.

After some community building, the students were then introduced to some of the tools that we use including our sticker charts (which are tied to the Seven Grandfather Teachings) and our Bead Ceremony. The Bead Ceremony is an ongoing project where students will earn beads for various hard, soft and creative skills that learn. For more information on specific beads, please click here.

Just before lunch, we headed out on a hike around a portion of the property to get to know it better. The students brought along their journals a mapped out the village and the surrounding area. We have a giant group map that we are creating together with all the special places we discover along the way.

After lunch, we headed out to choose our sit spots and spend some alone time in nature. These spots will play an important part throughout the year at Forest School as we will be visiting them weekly with different activities to do. We followed this up with the extreme race course – crawling through tubes, balancing on beams, army crawling under a fence, then hopping over walls – and all in under 30 seconds!

Throughout the day, we had some great moments of curiosity and exploration, too. From our students ripping up old diseased tomato plants to save the others; to climbing trees, catching frogs and naming swans; from sweltering heat, to running around in the pouring rain; from sharing legends and stories, to slurping down watermelon and spitting the seeds out as far we could. We had a blast and are looking forward to the upcoming semester!

We have a great group of kids this year and are excited to see where it will take us. We are always open to suggestions and want you to be involved as much as possible. Please let us know if you have any ideas or resources we can use to enhance your child’s learning.

That’s all for this week, check out the photos below! Next week we’ll be diving into Leave No Trace ethics.

Thanks,

Matt and Kim

That’s a wrap

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What an AMAZING season we had at Forest School!

Your child was able to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of concepts learned throughout our Forest School in our culminating Amazing Race Challenge. Using their compasses and orienteering skills, they navigated through various team building exercises, survived a terrible storm in a shelter, and indulged in placed-based learning by the infamous Fossil Mountain. Along the way, students answered questions related to safety, the Grandfather Teachings, medicine wheel, animals we studied, LNT principles, and tracking to earn material used for a building a small fire to celebrate our final time together. We processed the learning experienced throughout the “year” and shared many memories and laughs along the way.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, we cannot thank you enough for diving into this program with us and trusting us for the beginning stages of our Forest School. We know that the fall will look similar in terms of nature-based emergent learning and we look forward to creating more opportunities to grow and learn outdoors with your children. If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Uploaded soon will be a registration form for next year.

Thank you again for an amazing semester! Enjoy your exploring this summer!

We hope to see you on the trails/rivers/rock walls,

Matt & Kim

“Pond”er this!

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Hey Everyone,

We spent our days this week with two classical elements: Fire and Water (and I suppose the Earth and Wind as well). After measuring our tomato plants for growth, it was time for the much anticipated attempt at the Fire Bead.

After a review of the basic needs of fire (heat, oxygen, and fuel), we were off to the back fields for students to show off their skills. Students partnered up, selected their site and were given three matches to create a small fire that would burn long enough to roast a marshmallow. They gathered tinder, kindling and bigger pieces of wood just like we practiced (and a water bucket… safety first!) They built teepees, keeping in mind the 3 d’s – dead, down and dry wood. Within half an hour, ALL students were enjoying their marshmallows on the fire. Some were even able to light it using one match! Needless to say, everyone earned their Fire Bead!

The afternoon saw a visit to Black Ash Creek to discover the creatures it held. The students jumped right in (quite literally!) with sieves and nets, and quickly filled our buckets with various little critters. At first, we found a lot of the usual – striders, minnows and crayfish (even one with eggs under her tail!), but soon we had the magnifying glasses out and were identifying a whole bunch of new ones. We found a ton of mayfly larvae, an interesting, somewhat scary looking creature. Then came the elusive dobsonfly larvae, a hard character to identify. Finally, an intense looking predacious diving beetle, or more commonly known as the “water tiger”. We even caught a baby snapping turtle on Thursday! In true Forest School and LNT fashion, all the creatures were returned to their homes soon after making our observations and classifications.

Next week is Rock Climbing! All the gear will be provided, but if you have your own feel free to bring it. We recommend wearing running shoes too. As mentioned, we (Kim and Matt) won’t be there as we are off in the woods on canoe trips, but the students are lucky enough to have some great leaders filling in! We look forward to hearing about it!

We’ll see you at the final ceremonies!

Matt and Kim

Paddlin’

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Hey Folks,

We had the great opportunity to explore off property this week with a trip down the Beaver river. Though we had two drastically different weather days, the result was the same: lots of laughs and some new hard skills. We were treated to an abundance of wildlife – birds galore, fish, so many frogs we lost count, and of course bugs – as the students navigated their way down the river and even against strong winds.

On Wednesday, we joined up with the Red Tail Hawks from our sister Forest School group for our paddle and then we were off to their property to explore and get a sense of all the wonderful things they are up to – and what an incredible place they have. After our initial tour, Shannon led a lesson on survival debris shelters and the students jumped at the opportunity to set up ridge lines, frame the roof, and “shingle ” it with natural materials. Some turned into forts, while others were perfect for survival (complete with a NE facing door).

Thursday was similar, but we stayed in Heathcote and explored the Free Spirit gardens, accomplished some team building exercises, and then returned to Bygone Days to build shelters of our own. It’s always amazing to see what the kids can come up with when left to their own devices.

A great big thanks to all the adult volunteers who came out for the paddle with us – we couldn’t have done it without you. And special recognition to the students that sat stern of their very own boats!

We’ll see you next week! Enjoy the warm, sunny weather.

Matt and Kim

Learning Blocks and Compasses

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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!)

Art Attack!

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Hey Folks!

At Forest School, we develop a lot of skills: physical and emotional intelligence, ecological literacy, and much more. In more traditional school terms, we’ve had a heavy focus on Science, Physical Education, and English, with some Art and even Math included in there. Usually, we pick a topic and focus our lessons around it. This week we decided to focus on a subject rather than topic, Art, and see where that took us through our student-led, emergent and inquiry-based learning. Hence both days unfolding differently.

Remember that old TV show Art Attack? It was all the rage when we were growing up. So we decided to replicate that this week as our culminating project… the only catch? In order to get the materials, the students had to “buy” them with points earned through team-building challenges and other art projects throughout the day.

Our first project was a cheerio bird feeder to replace our old pb ones in our sit spots. The Red tails then drew pictures of all the birds they thought would visit their feeders, as the Snowy Owls came up with conversational pieces (and dramatic plays) of the what the birds were up to in their sit spot and saying to each other. Quite a treat to see your children’s imagination at play here!

Throughout the day students completed a lot of team-building challenges. These focus on developing teamwork, communication and trust among participants. The activities have no right answer, the learning being the process. The students were put in a variety scenarios – cross through the “spider web”, navigate lava rivers, become an ant on a log and switch places with everyone, flip the tarp over without getting off, and the human knot – whatever the case they were up for the challenge. And they earned valuable points along the way for their final masterpiece. In some cases, not all attempts were a “success” in terms of completion. But the debriefing process that ensued was full of learning, and incredible to watch and facilitate.

Both groups had a great time making their new hiking sticks as well. Using a variety of paints, hemp strings and carving, the students came up with some beautiful pieces of usable art. And even built a totem pole for our Forest Hut area.

The final project involved using our “loose parts” (anything that can be moved, natural or not, to create things). From high up on fossil mountain, the teachers watched as the students used the material they had earned, along with things in their surroundings to create a masterpiece from the bird’s eye view.

As for beads, we gave our very first peer support bead this week! We also gave out a whole bunch of craft beads for some awesome crafts, including the titanic, a bird/squirrel house, a homemade starbucks mug, a clay teepee and natural puppets.

See you next week!

Kim and Matt

Water, water everywhere

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Hey Folks,

What a couple of beautiful sunny days we had at Forest School. Our focus this week was learning about water, the water cycle and some creatures that call water home.

We started off the day “becoming” frogs with a visualization (turned into acting out) activity to set the tone. After an inevitable frog hunt, we got down to business. Our first activity was to build a zip lock bag water cycle. Perhaps your child came home asking for steaming water? Putting hot water in the bag and sealing it will mimic the water cycle they have drawn on the bag! If you’re more patient, put cold water in the bag and leave it in the sun and let this process happen naturally. We then hammered this learning home with a new macro-model (“The Water Cycle“) where students had to evaporate, then condensate, then precipitate, then do it all over again.

The students were awesome at brainstorming where we find water – the classic “lake”, “ocean”, “animals” and others, and then some really creative ones like the “store” and the “sewage treatment plant”. From here we took time to talk about available freshwater compared to salt water in the world with a 5L bucket example (in this case, 125 ml represents all the freshwater). This was a striking lesson for some students; somewhat of a “What?!” moment for them. The Snowy Owls (and some keen Red Tails) were given some homework around this revelation. They have a sheet to record their water usage for the next week. Please lend them a hand with some of the more difficult ones. On Thursday, this turned into a a great discussion about water distribution and human rights around the world and ended with us deciding as a group to make a Kiva loan to a school in Uganda implementing a water filtration system. (Don’t know Kiva? It’s a fantastic program – check it out here).

The afternoon was spent exploring the water on the property – searching out creatures, plants, or really anything we could find. We now also have 3 class pets: huge tadpoles that we’ll watch develop and then release in the next little while.

We gave out the most beads to date this week: 1 craft bead for a great hippo-on-a-stick, 4 shelter beads, 2 journaling beads and 2 knot beads (our first time given this out!). Great job everyone!

That’s all for now!

Matt and Kim

Rock and Roll

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Hey Folks!

Our Forest School day this week was spent on our first all day outing. Early in the morning, we loaded up the van and headed out to Metcalfe Rock, in the Kolapore Uplands. This beautiful area in our own backyard runs along the Bruce Trail and smack dab in the middle of the Niagara Escarpment. Our main purpose today: Caving.

Students geared up in harnesses, buckled up their helmets and strapped on their headlamps, eager to begin exploring. After quick LNT lessons from the students, and safety lessons from teachers, we dove (or rather crawled, contorted, slid) right into the crevice caves. Students’ comfort levels varied, but everyone put on a brave face and pushed their limits just out of their comfort zones. Some of the students were absolutely fearless and even made it all the way to the deep dark depths of the Bat Cave!

Afterwards, we got to enjoy and explore this wonderful area (protected by UNESCO). The kids were even able to hug the unique “braided-root” tree, a living ancient white cedar around 1000 years old! They also built shelters (Wed), had marshmallows on the fire (Thurs), played games and drank the “best tasting water ever” from the natural spring.

Wednesday was especially fun this week because we were joined by Shannon from our sister school and her Red Tailed Hawks for all the fun – a big thanks to everyone in your crew Shannon! On the same day, we even had a professional movie maker come out to make a promotional video. We’ll put the link up here when it is ready.

Thursday we also had a photographer out with us taking promotional pictures. We’ll add the photos here when they arrive.

Both groups also set up new geocaches on-site. Their coordinates will soon be up on Geocaching.com, known as ForestSchool1 and ForestSchool2 (for now you can find them at 1. N44 29.365 W080 15.436 and 2. N44 29.401 W080 15.364). You can try and find them with your kids! Don’t have a GPS? Download the app and find them with your phone!

That’s all for now! Happy Mother Earth Day!

Kim and Matt

Little sprouts

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Hey Folks!

We had another fun week at Forest School, with two unique days unfolding. We’ll start with the similarities.

Our focus this week was on seeds and plants, so we spent a bit of time in the classroom. In a nutshell, the students learned and recorded the life cycle of a plant (sunflower) in their journals, reviewed what plants need to survive and then dissected a soaked bean to reveal the baby plant inside. Afterwards, the students enjoyed a newly invented macro-model called “Plant Me!”, where they were able to apply their learning in an engaging outdoor activity. In the afternoon, we planted and labelled our very own seeds – 4 each in total – in egg cartons. Once these seeds sprout, they can be moved into bigger pots without removing them from the egg cartons (if you need a bigger pot, let us know! We have a bunch to share).

WEDNESDAY

We had the opportunity to visit the Collingwood Library to take part in their educational “Seed” Library. We took some seeds now, with the intention of returning more seeds in the fall when we harvest them. This project is a great initiative set up by the folks at Transition Collingwood and the Public Library, and not only reinforces plant life-cycle principles, but also a sense of community, sharing and giving back. What a great way to empower local seed savers and develop our seed literacy!

THURSDAY

The saga of Blueberry the bunny continued this week when, on arrival, we were greeted by the fox and her pups playing around the schoolhouse. The students jumped into their LNT learning last week (respect wildlife) and observed from afar. Such a pertinent experience for our students and a great testament to the power of learning in an outdoor environment.

Later on in the morning, Shannon, another teacher with the Forest School, came by and the students were more than excited to show her all of their favourite places. So map in hand, we went on a big hike to explore the property.

Both groups ended the day with a bonfire. Lots of stories were told, as well as creative songs with music (ukulele, shakers, nature drums) and dance, and improvised dramatic stories. We even had a treat to go along with the entertainment – some popcorn popped over the fire.

We gave out some more beads this week. 1 craft bead for a “cat’s eye”, 3 storytelling beads and 1 journalling bead. Congrats!

Next week we are on an all-day outing to go caving! It’ll be cold and dirty in there so please dress your child appropriately – including gloves!

Cheers,

Matt and Kim

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