We welcomed our FNS friends back at Bygone Days this week and dove right into some fun winter activities! After opening our day with a ceremonial smudge, our morning circle and some teambuilding icebreakers to get to know one another, students were keen to lean into learning about all things SNOW.
One of our favourite stories this time of year is called “Over and Under the Snow” by Kate Messner. It certainly set the stage for our snowshoe (or hiking) adventures and helped draw students’ attention to the little things along the way. Whether we ventured around the pond, to Ducky’s Campsite, or all the way to Fossil Mountain, we recognized the magical world that exists underneath the snow in the subnivean zone and were excited to discover it firsthand! We found various tracks, scat and other signs of animals surviving this wild winter along the way too!
After identifying some of the ways animals survive the winter (migrate, hibernate or stay active), students were tasked with the mission of keeping their own “animal” safe during the winter (ie. ensuring their jello didn’t harden when left in the cold). Using some of the learning from earlier in the day, combined with their own creativity, students hid, burrowed, or simply insulated their “animals” in the snow. Some even huddled with other containers of jello to keep warm, like deer mice! Ask your child what technique they used and whether or not it survived!
We further explored some important safety considerations about adventuring in the winter and took an in-depth look at ways to stay prepared to prevent some of the nasty, but realistic consequences of winter – like frost bite or hypothermia. We discussed ways to prevent and treat these concerns and packed our own survival backpack, filled with important gear to keep us safe and prepared while out in the elements.
During Wednesday and Thursday, students had the opportunity to build emergency shelters. We had some creative and thoughtful designs – like a collaborative snow trench (which turned into an awesome snow-village among the sumacs), and individual snow caves that were dug into the side of Fossil Mountain using mostly just snowshoes!
Kudos to students on Friday who were able to brave the wind-whipping snow and hail! It’s a good reminder for students to be prepared for FNS – including a fleece neck warmer, extra mitts, hats and thick socks, and even extra boots if you have them! You can’t have too many layers at FNS.
We had an AWESOME first week at FNS and made some great new friends each day! We look forward to another season of learning, exploring, laughing and playing with new friends!
What a wonderful snowy bluebird week!! We are so thankful for all of the snow and had a blast building and creating our new snow village! All week students spent time building quinzees and mini igloos, connecting tunnels, fashioning snow seats and creating wind walls around our outdoor fire pit. It feels like a special snow community, especially knowing all of the hands and hard work that has gone into it’s creation!
Most days students were also very keen to check out the snow on fossil mountain and of course we just had to toboggan down! We had so much fun zipping down, working together to build jumps, and learning about snow cornices and avalanches!
Thanks to FST, we have added a new classroom set of snowshoes and spent some afternoons breaking trail and exploring animals tracks along the way. What a fun way to travel around!
A special thanks to two students who brought in sweet grass to start our morning smudge on Thursday!
Reminder:
Next week is our final week at FNS before the Christmas break! Our winter session resumes the week of Jan 8. There are still a few spots left to register. We look forward to seeing you this winter!
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.
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!)
We welcomed Summer back (or for the first time??) at Forest School this week and took advantage of the beautiful, hot days to learn some important survival skills. As we’ve said before, with emergent interests, all of our days looked very different, but we’ll sum up the highlights here.
After our core routines (smudge, check-ins and sit spots), students were tasked with the mission to come up with the “ultimate” campsite. Students created designs and then headed out on our property to find the best place for a campsite – high and dry, sheltered and safe.
After exploring (including the unveiling of a new area on Thursday – “Mysterious Forest”), we chose our sites and students were off to work. Some groups made their shelters out of tarps, with a couple people earning their knots beads, while others opted for a natural shelter and are on their way to earning their Shelter’s Beads. Some students spent their time building trails to the site, while others focused hard on earning their Fire Beads. The Chickadees especially enjoyed gathering material, sorting out sticks for fuel, and trying different types of ignition (match, flint and steel, Bunsen burner). Of course fire safety and leave no trace principles were highlighted! To cap off the Ultimate Campsite experience, the Snowy Owls even had a bear-hang challenge… which was super helpful after the lunch picnic at their campsite!
Throw in some free-play time and watch the creativity unfold! We had swings made, shops open, fences built, and a full on imaginative forest “battle” where bark became a powerful a object. When we finished, we had an important lesson in leave no trace – some sites we dismantled completely, others we gave a permanent home and recorded on our map in the classroom.
And in between all of this, a jumble of creation and play, collaboration and independence, team building and new friendships forming. It’s amazing watching the group dynamics evolve and interests emerge. Music, role-playing, storytelling, building, dismantling, observing… it’s hard to capture it all in words, but it sure is inspiring.
Next Week:
We are going to try and catch some fish and learn some paddling strokes. We have all the gear, but if your child would like to bring in their rod and tackle, no problem!
See you next week,
Kim, Matt and Tamara
PS – If ever you want a better quality copy of a photo, just email us!
It is amazing what rain, sun, and a few weeks will do for our Heathcote property. The shrubs and flowers have grown so much that we almost couldn’t find some of our sit spots. Our day consisted of the learning and widening our knowledge about wild edibles and plants! With so much to talk about we focused on the famous poison ivy, along with it’s friends poison sumac and oak. We also focused a lot on expanding our imagination, teamwork, communication and respecting those attributes. Check out our wicked day!
A couple of weeks ago our students started their potato gardens, which have now started to sprout amazing leaves – soon enough we will be able to cook up those home-grown spuds! A toad hunt served as an excellent addition to all the excitement today, which included our respectful catching and releasing rituals. Midway through our hunt, Taven came across, what we believe to be a rat skull, YUCK! (but it was pretty cool!) To add to our discoveries through out the day we even came across two baby moles hiding in our compost area. We are hoping to see them again next week!
One of our main tasks throughout our day was to find a new or familiar plant life and identify it from our nature books. Some of our finding were Queens Anne’s lace, Mustard Garlic, Buttercups, Dog wood, and many more! It is great to see our students taking the initiative to gain more knowledge and educate their fellow classmates on their findings. Our students also learned very quickly that it is hard to decipher between some plants due to many of them looking the same, as well as being unsure about whether or not a plant is safe to pick, or eat!
Staying true to our lesson, our afternoon consisted of digging into our seed library! We came across some cucumbers, mint, daises, peas, beans, lavender, spinach, zucchini, kale and sunflower seeds. Our students were given 6 decomposing containers and the opportunity to plants 6 of their favourite seeds. Active play was also a huge part of our afternoon, along with the whole class participating in a game of “Farmer and the Horse”. This game was one of the highlights for all of our students, and while some played this all afternoon, others played in their sit spots, became fire keepers, and identified more plants.
Today there were 4 respect beads earned, along with 2 litter less lunches, 1 shelter, 2 show and share and 6 curiosity beads. Great job to everyone!
This week Forest School brought us another day packed full of learning, exploration and discovery. When our students arrived this morning, we were shocked to discover the difference in the landscape on our property from last week. It was amazing to see how high the Beaver River rose, but with the river taking away some of hiking paths, it gave us an opportunity to explore new areas.
Our topic this week was all about our local animals, we spent our morning playing games like “Ocelot tag” which was led by Emily, one of our fellow students. Some highlights of the day were making nests, continuing building our shelters and working towards starting fires without matches. We also brought out our collection of animal prints, and took time to learn 5 new footprints to add to our journals, as well as playing a footprint matching game to test our knowledge! Our big winner was Taven for getting 6 out of 9 correct.
While we explored the great outdoors, we tried to live like animals. Imagination play, and working on our imitation animal calls provided great opportunities for our students to have a good laugh. Some of us pretended to be beavers, dinosaurs, wolves, and sloths – and some even hugged trees! Our 3 epic games of “camouflage” was a great way to mimic animals hiding from their predator, and an awesome segway into our main lesson of learning, and teaching their fellow peers something new about their favorite animal. We dove right into our animal books, and found all we could about our furry, and not so furry little friends. Some of the animals we learned about were the Pig, Fox, Armadillo, Yellow Jacket, Wolf, Chickadee, Red headed Woodpecker and Coyote. Great job everyone for all your efforts in researching the animals you wanted to learn more about!
Our last fun activity of the day, in light of the holiday fast approaching, was to have an Easter egg Hunt! All were found except 2! Maybe well find them next week as a little treat!
We would like to send out a BIG thank-you for all the show and tells today – 4 in total! We had a cool branding piece brought in on some wood, wolf information books, flint & steel, and a super neat rock with crystals inside called a geode! We are SUPER lucky that we all love to share, and teach each other new things! Watching our students be so intrigued by the information each individual possesses is incredible! Each, and every one of our amazing Forest School kids teaches us something valuable, and interesting each day!
This week was full of support! 8 Respect and Love stickers, 5 wisdom stickers, along with 1 peer support bead.
Next week – We will going off property to explore more of the Bruce Trail! Get ready for some hiking!
Fresh spring air, and a brand new semester welcomed back all of our fellow Forest School students today, as well as a few new faces! This week at school we dove right back into our regular routines (smudge, check ins) and were all super excited with reconnecting with everyone.
Our morning was all about exploring our grounds, and discovering passions, and curiosity within us. There was also an abundance of tree climbing, shelter building, making new friends and imagination play. We also found an abandoned bees nest!
During our morning hike we came across a large piece of land that was taken out by Beavers! We couldn’t believe the destruction one little furry friend is capable of! This also opened up an awesome discussion, and got the kids using their critical thinking skills. How strong are their teeth? How many Beavers took all the trees down? Where did they build their dam? How long did this take them? We did come across a pile of trees…there might have been a Beaver spotting…it was unclear but we will re visit this site for more investigation.
We also took time to reflect back to the fall, and revisit our fire starting skills, to work towards the Fire bead! It was awesome to see how many students remembered what a fire needs to survive (fuel, oxygen and heat), different types of fuel (tinder, kindling and logs) and how we put fires out (water, stomping and sand).
Our first day back came with lots of love and respect stickers. Along with 2 peer support beads, 2 fire beads, 1 show and tell bead and 1 animal-tracking bead. Great job to all our students! What a way to kick start our spring semester.
This week at Forest School we spent our last day of Winter semester building shelters for our community, student led games and reflecting on our time spent with each other. A little fun was also spent around the fire-creating banana boats. Another epic day!
Our morning was spent discovering animals and natural objects around our fishpond, which naturally led into building chipmunk’s and fairy shelters. We then shifted our focus onto shelters for our school. Teamwork, communication and imagination were a huge part of this project. With the use of natural and man made objects our students created the start of their ultimate tree fort!
We also spent some time playing games that our students created, our kids have some amazing imagination!
Ancient Egypt Mummy Attack
Which consisted of two mummy’s and 5 relics.
Sunflower (gave life)
Painted rock (super strength)
Medallion (unlocks secrets)
Bandana (power to see the unseen)
Block with numbers (code)
The goal of the game is to find all the relics and get them to the safe zone before getting caught by the mummy’s.
Dead ants – All ants have to run to different safe zones without getting caught by the anteater.
A few other games were obstacle course and pass the barrier game.
These are awesome games and definitely will be played again!
To finish off our day we took some time to relax and reflected on our time at Forest School. We shared our favourite memories, skills we have gained and beads we have accomplished. Finishing off with report cards and our Winter semester video, which you can watch below.
Thank-you to all the students and parents for being apart of our FIRST Winter semester. All out students came to school ready for an adventure with lots of layers, snacks and happy faces! We had so much fun this semester and looking forward to Spring. Thank-you for taking this adventure with us!
Next Week – Our first day of Spring! Outdoor Skills and Thrills.
We celebrated the end of our semester with a little “spring cleaning” this week and spent some time outfitting our sit spots, exploring the “concrete factory” and updating the amenities at our camp sites. Naturally, students incorporated some slack lining and tree climbing too!
Over both days, it was awesome to watch creativity bloom. Tuesday we visited an area of our property known as the concrete factory – essentially a muddy and sandy area with a small amount of running groundwater. It was soon discovered that this mix turned into “quicksand” and suddenly students were stuck!! After a rescue mission, it was decided we should barricade this area off to warn other students, so we quickly made a fence from the down branches and grass (for cord) in the area.
While this was going on, other students were searching, opening and discovering hundreds of fossils. Everyone was on the hunt for Trilobytes and worked together to pry the rocks open at their “excavating store”. Even more students were damming up the flowing river and adding pipes and tunnels to direct it. It sure was a busy morning!
On Wednesday, we shifted focus to our campsite and soon enough a market was open, trading in bricks, tree bows, sticks and more. Eventually we had an entirely new shelter built, a (well-supervised!) knife throwing pit using homemade throwing knives one of our students created from old saw blades, and entirely new sit spots for some Snowy Owls.
After lunch on both days, we played our favourite game – Survival. Students became part of the food chain and had to survive for 30 minutes finding food, shelter and water. We are happy to report that everyone from both days survived – and we’ve never seen a more friendly and cooperative carnivore!
To finish off the day we had a bonfire and cooked some bannock. We shared our favourite memories from the Winter and appreciations for each other. Afterwards, we gave out report cards and watched our Forest School Winter Movies (which you can see below).
Lastly, a big appreciation for you – the parents!! Winter can be a tough time of year, but with your dedication, commitment and awesome layering work, we had a really successful semester! Thanks for taking part in this journey with us.
Next Week: Spring Semester begins – Outdoor Skills and Thrills!
