It’s been a little while since the last post and there’s plenty to reflect on! We have been having all sorts of fun spending our days outdoors.
To no surprise, students absolutely love mud! And with our mud kitchen in full effect, there’s no end to it! Whether we are stomping our boots, measuring globs, mixing and serving up various mud treats, or enjoying exfoliating hand spa treatments, the creativity is contagious! The basics for a mud kitchen: a few bowls, pots, spatulas, plenty of mud, but most importantly, some kids keen to get messy and dive in! There must be a correlation between the degree of fun someone has and the amount of laundry afterwards. Thanks families for understanding that play (especially muddy play!) is synonymous with learning and an integral part of our program! This hands-on experience teaches us so much!
We have made some pretty significant transformations in our forested space these past few weeks. There are plenty of new shelters (debris and lean-to) and special trees and sit spots that the students enjoy and tend to. We happily care for this new-to-us space and always try to leave it better than we’ve found it. That means treading lightly on the land, and picking up more than our share of rubbish.
One student reminded us a few weeks back that “the forest has the absolute best air ever. You can even feel it!” And last week we were able to taste it too! Students are learning about some wild edibles, including our current favourite trail snack…. Trout lilies! I wonder what magic we will discover this week?
With the heavy rain last week, our students are becoming seasoned forest school kiddos. Many of them declared rain days to be their favourite… mostly because there are so many more worms!
Many thanks to you for reading and believing in the importance of nature-connection for kids!
What do you do when your brother is moving and delivers you a trailer full of good, usable wood? Well, it turns out the answer is a lot! Students imaginations ran wild this week as we set them loose (so to speak – tool-use is an integral part at FNS, but we do have guidelines!) and their creations came to life. We had gardens built, benches, boats (both small and kid size), docks, tables and much more. Epic wooden forts were created; hammers, butter knives and figurines were carved; and even a bat box was built and hung up in Maple Forest.
As the days unfolded, our students shifted their focus to community building, and more specifically figuring out what could be built or created to better our time at Forest School. Some students remade our main fire pit to include cardinal directions (and a new fire pit in Mysterious Forest). Others uncovered the need of a new bridge in Maple Forest and were fast to work. One student even recognized the need to clean up our river after the big rains and all the trash that had been swept down it. There’s more stories along the same lines, but the point is that we are seeing one of our key “indicators of awareness” coming into play: service to the community. It’s one way our students show us they understand that they are an important part of a greater community, and they are wanting to support one another. It’s a great feeling on our end!
As usual, throw in our core routines to the mix, some play, some adventure, some mud, some rain, some sun, some hammock time, some ukulele and new songs, and a delicious Wild Violet Jelly (recipe to follow soon!) and call it a week well spent!
A big shout out to our PA Day program – we had a blast exploring and discovering with you!
Hey Folks!
We’ve been busy enjoying the warmer temperatures and exciting changes that Spring brings! Here’s a few of the highlights over the past weeks.
Carving
Tool-use is a big part of FNS, and with the warmer temps, we are seeing an increased interested in creating wood projects. We love the creativity and the projects we see developing around the campfire during down time. With only a couple months until our Spring Trading Blanket (see here for more info), students are getting busy preparing!
Larping
When our Wednesday students approached us about creating a LARP (Live Action Role Play) we wanted to be supportive and follow their passions – but admittedly we had to look it all up first! A quick google search later on and we were totally on board with them. Over the course of a couple weeks, students developed characters, a whole fantasy world, shelters and stores and mapped the entire area of Mysterious Forest (which became “Indigoweeodd”, a last remaining settlement in a post-apocalyptic world). They developed complex social orders, a monetary system known as wood chips and a whackload of rules and guidelines around play, battle, trading and magic. And while I can’t do it justice in a blog, it was an epic day of uncovering treasure, friendship (and treason!) and solving the clues. And to our pleasant surprise, it ended in a peace treaty signed by all! No doubt if your child was part of this, you’ve heard the stories and know by their excitement just how awesome this day was and why it will go down in Forest School History for us.
BirdinG
Some of our students are taking advantage of the return of the birds and really getting to understand and know them. They are successfully identifying most common species,as well as other not as common ones. As we tap into the bird language, we are learning a lot about what is going on all around all day and gaining a deeper connection with the land.
Geocacheing
Easter hunt… FNS style. We learned how to use a GPS to uncover a treat (Marshmallows) to cook over the fire!
Sowing Seeds
We are getting our gardens ready, making planters and planting seeds!
Wild Edibles
Perhaps one of our favourite times of year is when we start seeing old friends popping up. Our leek colonies are out in full force as we focused this week on sustainable harvesting. Trout lilies make a delicious treat along our hikes and we’ve even sampled some wild carrots (Queen Anne’s Lace)! It’s a tasty time of year.
Catchable Critters
We’ve seen a significant jump in the amount of reptile and amphibian friends over the past little while. So much so that we rarely venture without a net in hand. As the student are getting up close and personal with these folks, they are making respectful and lasting connections with them and uncovering first hand new ideas – including that turtles aren’t as slow and they are made out to be!
April Showers
We’ve had a lot of rain this past while are a so thankful for it! We try and shift perspectives of rainy days and “bad days” at FNS in a effort to minimize the idea that happiness, exploration and fun are contingent on the sun. Some of our favourite days so far have left us soaked! The plants and animals are loving the water and it gives us new, more adventurous routes along our hikes. Levels are up all over the place, with the river higher than we’ve ever seen and some sit spots being totally washed out. We love that with repetitive exposure to the same spots, students get the chance to observe and notice these changes on a weekly basis.
Music
Most groups have gravitated toward really musical days! We’ve got our established weekly songs, and are writing many more together with the classes. Students are even writing and playing their very own using a ukulele!
And there is so much more that I just can’t sum up here! Have a great weekend.
This week our students got really excited about creating communities in different areas of our forests to stake a claim and create a personal village for each group. After a quick recap and learning about three basic survival shelters (Lean-to, Teepee and Debris), we chose a place on the map and headed out to let our creations come to life. The groups worked well together creating forts, stores, trading posts, hospitals and much more. The shelters became more than just for survival – they were well landscaped with walls, gardens and benches. We left the forest every day excited to return and add more to these ongoing projects.
The stories that came to life with the shelter building was paramount, if not more so than the construction! One group even created an entire fantasy world after coming up with the idea of LARPing (Live action role play). Governing rules have been established, challenges created and backstories established for all characters. Stay tuned next week for all the details – we love rolling with child passions as it always leads to incredible adventure and learning.
Aside from all that, we were treated with the return of the Trumpeter Swans this week. After connecting with the Trumpeter Swan Society, we know that one of our swans is the offspring of Swan 100 – the first of its kind born in the wild in Ontario in 100 years. A big thanks to the students who carefully took the time and had the patience to find out their tracking numbers!
In other news, we’ve also shut down our Maple Syrup production as we were overwhelmed with how much sap we collected this year! We’ve moved on to tapping a small amount of Birch trees (which are at least 80:1 in ratio). The students from Tuesday have also found another way to harvest it – snip a little branch and attached a plastic bottle. So far, it’s working really well!
One of our favourite things about the Spring is all the bird action that happens around us. We’ve been really focused on this lately as we try to tap into these messengers of the forest. The abundance of song and chatter has helped our students practice “sneaking” through the woods by minimizing their disturbance while growing their awareness. It’s been great jumping into to animals forms and channeling the energy of some of our forest friends (foxes, lynxes, etc) to really take our time while moving and quieting ourselves.
As we dive into bird languages, we’ve become more focused. Our sensory awareness has increased and we often have moments of total awe as we live fully in the present, quietly connecting with nature. We teach our kids about it, but find it’s so much more rewarding to learn this through observation, games, connection, field guides and simply slowing down.
This week was extra fun! Some groups had the chance to show their dramatic side creating skits for our Crow Theatre based in bird language – with some hilarious results! Others took the time to journal about bird encounters, creating elaborate stories of what birds are actually up to as they personify them at close range. Others jumped into the role of Mama bird feeding and protecting their young to uncover puzzles – or some sort of combo of all these things.
We also have a weekly bird challenge, too, that some folks are eagerly up to trying! This had led to an accumulating long list of identified birds and made us happy birders. Combine all this with the usual core stuff, some awesome storytelling, bow drills, sun/magnifying glass art, new songs and explorations and call it time well spent in nature!
Ah, birds. We love them. They teach us so much – most importantly just to listen and be still.
What a great kick off to our Meaford Program! We spent these beautiful days becoming familiar with the lay of the land and getting to know our new group of friends. We have already established a wonderful, fun loving sense of community, who are keen on spending entire days outside learning from (and in!) nature.
What better way to dive into it, than jumping in puddles, making mud treats, jumping over and under logs, and climbing up trees. All hands were in deck as we collected sap from our maple trees and began boiling it down into syrup. But better yet was the sweet reward of drinking it straight from the source! We were feeling very grateful for our tree friends and all that they provide for us!
We tapped into our animal forms by sneaking into new forested territory and building shelters, fairy villages and much, much more!
We are really grateful to be able to spend our days outdoors together! What an awesome way to start off our Spring!
Thanks for reading along. There are more pictures posted below.
Kim
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!
We had a great wrap-up to our Winter session this week, with pretty much blue bird skies all week long! As we explored and played, we reminisced about the past couple months and shared our favourite memories – turns out we did quite a bit over the winter session! Here are some highlights from our week:
We celebrated Mardi Gras this week on Tuesday with some pancakes over the fire, complete with Maple Syrup made on-site from last year (and are eagerly anticipating working the sugar shack when we return!).
A huge pile of snow also became the backdrop of a newly invented game – Arctic Fox. Think “camouflage” and “red light/green light” with a massive, sneaky twist.
We also put up our trail cam this week in hopes of capturing some of the wildlife we are always tracking along our adventures. Stay tuned for pictures of that!
The trading blanket was a huge success and we are looking forward to doing it again at the end of the Spring Semester. What’s a trading blanket? Read more here.
We made wonderful and unbelievable stories with our new set of story rocks!
Our Chickadees also got an answer in the mailbox from the fairies, along with a potion to help them see all the magic in the Forest – and it worked!
Along with fires (some started with magnifying glasses!), play, exploration, tracking and lots of birds coming out, we had a fun week and great send off for our Winter Warriors. Enjoy the March Break and see you soon!
It’s a been awhile since we’ve been able to blog – the life of having an almost-one-year-old, and Kim returning back to teach at FNS – but we thought we’d get ya caught up on some of the exciting things we’ve been up to over the past few weeks. When the snow days finally let up (wacky weather this year!), we were able to go on a quite a few adventures!
Cross Country Skiing
Our older groups headed to Scenic Caves again this year for a day full of skiing and exploration. After a brief lesson – mainly how to get back up and slow down – we were off to the trails. Students challenged themselves and made it all the way to the lookout, while navigating big hills and sometimes high winds! We visited the bridge on one of the days, and it felt like we were almost blown off it was so windy!
Ice Fishing
Our ice is almost a foot thick at the moment, which not only gives us a quick shortcut to Maple Forest, but also allows us to test our fishing skills! We found the hot spots this year, with multiple groups bringing in big numbers. Our new Winter Record was broken twice this year – first at 6 fish, then smashed by a whopping 22 (or the same hungry fish? Who knows!).
Animal Tracking and Bird Languages
Winter is the ideal time for tracking critters big and small. We’ve learned a whole lot about the subnivean and how little creatures keep warm and active during the long cold days and nights. We’ve followed coyote tracks, only to realize it was a pack in single file that suddenly split in three directions. We’ve uncovered story after story of creatures playing in the forest. We got up close and personal (respectfully) with the remnants of a deer, and successfully identified a dead eastern screech owl. We learned all about peculiar habits of creatures in the Winter… and best of all, we’ve got a trail cam going up to see if we catch a glimpse of all the wonderful action going on! It will be especially neat to see these stories unfold and really gain an understanding of who we’re sharing the land with!
tinkering/BUILDING
Snow offers the wonderful opportunity to create and we’ve seen it all this winter. We’ve had quinzees come and go with this changing weather; huge walls and epic forts; GT only parking areas; and so much more. We’ve also had so many projects on the go – baskets, butter knives, spears, bowls, sling-shots and more. A lot of this is in anticipation of the trading blanket next (where we trade created items with one another – more info here).
Fire Building
Our students are capable fire builders and can all certainly light a match and sustain a fire. From our youngest to oldest, most have been able to start one using magnesium and steel as well! Recently we took it a step further: classic Flint and Steel. Students made sparks with steel wrap around knuckles or chisels and flint. They caught these sparks on charred cloth and created fire in “nests” by slowly (and patiently) working at it. It was amazing to watch – and so far we’ve three successful students with one accomplishing it in under 4 mins!
Music
It’s always been a part of our program, but this Winter we took the steps to make it an active role. We’ve got guitars, ukuleles and more music making devices around and have seen some awesome bands form over time. From making up our songs, to borrowing those of others as part of routines, it’s become an integral part of what we do – but more in this in a future blog, likely titled “Chicka-DJ” as our kids came up with.
And then there is so much more – the everyday fun, learning, and exploration that is Forest School. Winter is one of our favourite seasons! Thanks for joining along in our wonderful Winter fun and reading our blog too!
Everything, absolutely everything, tastes better cooked over a fire. Period. End of sentence.
Over the past couple weeks we have put our groups’ culinary skills to work and created some delicious masterpieces.
In the outdoor world, learning to cook over a flame is a key skill to know when venturing into the wilderness. Moreover, it helps develop many important and highly transferable skills. It’s a creative outlet that practices reading and basic math (measuring). It’s following a plan and seeing a project through. It helps develop patience, improvisation and risk management (knives, fire). It gives an appreciation for real food and a sense of pride in one’s work. It’s also a needed life skill and helps build relationships with others. And most of all, it’s fun!
Most of our meals were made directly on a fire over the past couple weeks, but some were cooked over a camp stove (new skill!) and others were even cooked on a homemade stove made of tin cans. Here’s what our folks came up with:
Mac and Cheese
Boil water on a camp stove, and then add pasta, let it cook then add the rest! Simple and delicious.
4 cups of water
Salt
2 cups pasta
3-4 Tablespoons of margarine
1 cup of diced cheese
4 tbsp of powdered milk (or in our case powdered Mac and Cheese)
Soup (“Mac and Everything but Cheese Soup”)
Boil water over fire, chop and add harder veggies first, bouillon, then macaroni. Carve a spoon and stir. Voila!
Half pot of water
2 cups pasta
Veggies – any you want (we used carrots, potatoes, onion)
1 can of Chickpeas
Veggie Bouillon cubes (3-4)
Soup (“Onion and Bean – Don’t forget the bouillon!”)
Cooked on a homemade tin can stove! Boil water and add everything – stir)
Half pot of water
2 cups pasta
3 onions
Green Beans
Veggie Bouillon cubes (Don’t forget em like we did!)
Cheddar & chive scones
Mix flour and butter until it resembles bread crumbs. Add salt and milk, and mix into dough. Fold in chives and cheddar and place in greased cast iron pot, then cover with coals in the fire.
3 cups flour
1 cup buttermilk
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup chives
1/2 cup cheddar
1/4 cup butter
Apple CrisP
Slice and fry apples in a bit of butter. Add everything else and cook until soft!
½ cup oats
6 tbsp flour
3 tbsp brown sugar and ¼ cup sugar
Some cinnamon
2 tbsp butter
Mac apples
