Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Survival Olympics (or Mary had a little lamb…)

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Hey Folks,

We had some fun this week putting some of our survival skills to the test in a collaborative, cooperative and competitive style Olympics we nicknamed the “Forest School Timber Tour”. Our days varied greatly Tues-Thurs with different events geared toward developing and testing various skills – each day uniquely designed with the specific class dynamics in mind. Some events were even created by our students en route. We pushed ourselves physically, mentally and creatively, and in the end all agreed that no matter who won, everyone had fun.

To get an idea of what happened over the week, here’s some of the events:

Individual:
Tree Toss – a whopping 33’2″ by one student!
Obstacle Course – new FS record 43 seconds!
Singles Tug of War
Planking
Race around the Pond
Sling Shot Competition

Team Competition:
Flag Design and Cheer
Broom Ball
Ultimate Capture the Flag
Forest School Idol Music Competition
Balance Beam

Cooperative:
Fire Building (Magnesium and Steel)
Shelter Building
Orienteering
Plane Crash Survival
Lava Bridges
Human Knot, Tarp Flip, Hula Hoop Circle and more.

On Friday we approached things differently and focused entirely on teamwork with initiatives that earned students “Timber Dollars” that were used for buying gear to create the ultimate campsite. We’re really proud of everyone’s hard work (and persistence!) in achieving their goals. And through that persistence, our students were able to light the fire with only minutes to spare!

At the end of all days we handed out (wooden) medals to our winners! And a big shout out to all the sportsmanship award winners – you showed us that even through competition, we’re all still good friends.

Next Week: Animal Tracking!

Cheers,

Matt, Kim and Tamara

PS. Confused about the title? “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was our official Olympic Anthem.. ie one of only 3 songs Matt can play on the recorder.

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A hiking we will go…

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Hey Everyone,

It was a great week here at Forest School and we had a lot of fun as teachers exploring new places and old favourites with our students. On Monday, we held a trial day to introduce new children to FNS. It was a great day full of sharing our special places at Bygone Days, hiking, playing, making shelters, fires and building with hand tools. Thanks to all those who came out, we had a blast!

Once a semester we like take a field trip to explore our local trails. We live in a beautiful area and believe that place-based education extends to our community as a whole. This week, we went to 4 different natural places with a goal to explore, have fun and learn a few things along the way.

Tuesday – Clendennan Dam

Located in Clarksburg, this place is a gem! After checking out the dam (and racing sticks over it) we headed along the trails. This hike offers a beautiful cedar forest, perfect for tree climbing as our students soon found out. The Chickadees set up camp and played around while the Snowy Owls headed further down the trail – trampled across bridges, along the cliffs, through the forest and finally out to the Beaver River. Along the way we saw lots of animal prints, fish and after lunch we were even treated with the discovery of a Beaver Dam.

Wednesday – Duncan (Bruce Trail)

The Collingwood and Heathcote FNS’s joined forces for this day as we stomped our way through some of the muddiest trails we’ve ever seen… and you probably already know this from the state of your child’s clothing. But muddy kids = happy kids, right?!

We hiked for a bit, down hills, across streams and up ladders over fences then chose a nice spot to hunker down for lunch. While there, unstructured time unfolded in various ways – building forts (which became zombie refuges), fairy cities with playgrounds and restaurants, and good old fashioned group games.

Thursday – Eleventh Line Trail

With the weather on Thursday our plans changed and we spent a good half of the day exploring and hiking around our own property. In the afternoon, we stayed a bit closer to home and had an awesome time splashing through puddles, navigating log balancing beams and searching for the perfect hiking stick. Oh, and again, avoiding the zombies on the Deer Trail of course! Kudos to these kids for braving (and embracing) the wild rain and snow!

Friday – Kolapore

Friday was a special day and with the awesome weather we were able to explore a really special place – Al’s Cave. Located close to Metcalfe Rock along a side trail, Al’s cave is home to a Geocache. After a crash course in Geocaching, students were given the GPS and led the way. After some twists and turns, and climbs and descents, we found our way and entered the cave. After a bit more looking we were able to locate the Geocache, swap prizes, write our name’s down and learn about Al and why this place is so important to us. When we returned to the school, students were so excited we continued our Geocache adventure and uncovered 3 more!

It was a really fun week, and we’d encourage you to explore these places with your kids! Let us know if you need anymore details to get there! Before we wrap up, we wanted to send out a BIG WELCOME to our new students this week and last. It’s exciting seeing our community growing!

A big thank you to all of the students who helped create our wonderful FNS float for the parade – it looked fabulous and was a great group project!

Next Week: Wild About Maps!!

Cheers,

The Forest School Team
(Matt, Kim and Tamara – and so many more!)

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Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

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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Ice Slides and Cave Dwellers (and sunny, sunny days!)

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Hey Everyone,

This week on Tuesday we celebrated International Forest Day and Wednesday we celebrated International Water Day. I guess the world kicks environmental protection into high gear come Spring! And what better way to celebrate than check out some of our local protected areas!

We headed out to explore some new wonders in our “backyard” at the Nottawasaga Lookout with physical literacy on our mind. Our goal was to explore the crevasses and hiking trails and ultimately uncover some caves. And what better way to celebrate the arrival by spring than with a ton of SNOW?! We slipped and slid our way down into the crevasses, contorted our bodies through impossibly small cracks and discovered new amazing things over and over again. And we had the whole place to ourselves, with just the birds to keep us company.

On Wednesday, we also had time to check out and eat lunch at Devil’s Glen lookout, and hike down in to the valley to escape the wind. What a beautiful place and worth much more exploring!

Many students pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and took on a lot of scary (perceived) risks. Other students were great at knowing and respecting their own limits in our challenge-by-choice activities. Teamwork and helping each other out became the norm. And patience – everyone moved slow to be safe and encouraged one another. It’s amazing to see a community thrive. And as bonus, we even found some small caves!

All in all, everyone had a blast and left feeling proud of their personal accomplishments throughout the day. Everyone received a bravery bead! We also gave out 5 Peer Support beads, 1 Leadership bead, 1 Curiosity bead, 1 Nature Lover bead and 1 Al’s bead. Congrats!

Next Week:
Our last class for the Winter Semester!! It will be a celebration of all we’ve done; a recap of our time and a look forward to our Spring semester!

See you next week,

Matt and Kim

PS. Our apologies for all the muddy clothes Tuesday!!! It warmed up quite a bit!

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Let the games begin!

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Hi Friends,

Lighting our torches on fire.

You could smell the team spirit in the air today! We hosted our first annual “Winter Olympics” and the Weather Gods were on our side bringing us snow! Our students were put to the test today, mentally and physically and came out on top! Before our games started we had to decide which countries our groups were going to represent, Canada or Switzerland! We then proceeded with the games by running around our pond in a relay race style torch run! “Let the games begin”.

Start of our torch run.

Team Switzerland

Team Canada

Our first game of the day was Broom ball! It was a perfect way to introduce teamwork, hand eye coordination and communication to our day. It was a great challenge for all and a great way to see some of our hockey players use their sweet skills. It was a tight match full of suspense, highs and lows, close calls and amazing goals. A well played match by all and to no surprise the score ended up being Canada 2 and Switzerland 1.

After broom ball, we traded our braun for brain power and played an intense game of human size “X’s and O’s”. This game brought challenging times to our younger Painted Turtles, but created some friendly competition and leadership opportunities for the older Snowy Owls to swoop in to assist our wee ones with another Canadian win ! Canada 5 – Switzerland 2.

Our next challenges consisted of Super duper slip and slide – having a run way of 60 feet into a slide of snow. After a couple trial runs and learning that jumping on our knees didn’t get us anywhere we got the hang of it. The longest distance was 6 feet. We also tested our physical ability with long jump and limbo.

Switzerland coming into the lead.

If you have never played Kubb (similar to Viking chess), you need to! It’s an awesome game based on pure luck – so don’t be a sore loser. Our students caught on quick and the game was full of cheers. We had a bunch of lucky students knocking over all the pegs and were left to knock over the King for the win!

Our last challenge of the day was bobsled. We used PVC pipe cut in half and small wooden balls. Our challenge was to work collectively as a team and start the ball high, and aim for the buckets. After a lot of brainstorming, many attempts and new strategies later, we nailed it! We are so proud of everyone working together!

Out of all the games we ended with a TIE!

Our closing ceremony was a great way to end our day with a few last words, and to congratulate our amazing team players. It was wonderful to see how we all worked together, communicated and challenged ourselves by stepping out of comforts zones. Many laughs were had, and memories made during our Winter Games. One of the many highlights of the day: Lara putting the fire out. She miss judged the strength of her arms and tossed water on the fire and half of it hit another student instead of the fire. Somebody’s been eating their veggies!

Congratulations to all the new beads earned Fire and Show and Tell, with an abundance of stickers, 4 layers, love, respect and a huge high five to Lucy for earning the first bravery sticker, for getting out of her comfort zone and participating in our morning smudging ceremony.

Also a big thank you to Kaysa for working on her survival kit and showing the class what she added: a knife, flashlight, duct tape, hand warmers, tin foil, and of course more chocolate.

Reminders** – Students can earn Bingo stickers for doing activities at home! Just share what you did! (Photo evidence doesn’t hurt).

Next Week – The Science of snow!

Thanks for checking in this week,

Neal and Krista

Bonus Pictures

Our “Winter” Olympians

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Wow! What a wonderful day for our Olympics. Though we lacked the obvious winter appeal, we made up for it in high-energy games, creative play and an incredible spirit of the games! Upon arriving at Bygone Days, students were divided and asked to choose (or create) a country (Canada vs Nepal; Greece vs The Bernese Mountain Dogs) for the Winter Olympic Games. Our Olympians relayed the torch around the pond, lit the fire, swore an Olympian Oath with a focus on participation and having fun, belted out their cheers and set off for our Olympic Games. The first match was an epic sport that was new to many students… BROOM BALL! What a fun way to transfer familiar skills and technique to a new invasion game activity! This game was a highlight for many of our students, along with the shootout afterwards for the Tuesday crew and a student-inspired javelin toss for Wednesday’s.

Javelin Toss

Ice-broom-bowling

Broom Ball

After Broom Ball, the Olympians had the opportunity for another team challenge: BOBSLEDDING! Students were tasked with the challenge of working together to move marbles from one location to another, using their bobsled (a half-piece of PVC). This activity appears to be simple, however as we discovered, there are so many factors that contributed to a successful experience. It was an incredible tool to debrief group dynamics and to emphasize the importance of each member’s action on the team. It was powerful to hear the individual groups brainstorm solutions, communicate effectively and listen to their peers, repair mini-ruptures that happen during high-stress situations, and ultimately work together to transport as many marbles down their shoot as possible! What a great way to energize the group!

Working together on the “Bobsled”

Our next activity included more target practice for the Olympians. Students threw disc’s to hit various hoops, earning points depending on distance or angle. This activity helped with focus, allowed for team camaraderie and brought the competition of the games even closer together, for both days!

For our final challenge, Tuesday’s group chose to play an ultimate match of Kubb (essentially Viking Chess) to decipher the winning team. It was here that Canada was able to make a 2 point comeback on Nepal, ending Tuesday’s Winter Olympic Games in a TIE! Now, Wednesday’s group opted for an epic game of Capture the Flag, where, believe it or not, none of the flags could be found! This too ended Wednesday’s Winter Olympic Game in a TIE! (We swear we aren’t just giving out participation awards, haha!)

Kubb

It was a really fun day today. It was quite nice to see the difference between the groups. Tuesday’s students were really keen to imagine and create new structures with the PVC pipes and create giant slides as a group. Wednesday students were eager to build the fire, make their own tea and give offerings to the trees, or spend some quiet time working away at their spoons. A lot of new crafts came out of this week – some DIY axes, incredible home-made snowshoes, and spoons. Our Show and Tell experience was awesome! Thanks for working on these beads at home and sharing your experiences with us.

We had quite a few new bead recipients this week, including 6 Show and Tell Beads, 2 “Al’s” Bead for kindness, and even a Bingo Bead already! We also gave out a well-earned Teaching bead for some awesome yoga lessons to start and end our day. A big congratulations to our students for working so hard!

FYI: If you were curious if our amphibians survived their week-long hibernation… they did!

If you haven’t received our newly accommodated Winter Schedule, be sure to check out our website. Next week, we will be exploring The Science of Snow! Looking forward to seeing you!

Matt and Kim

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