Whirlpools and Waddling, Paddling and Pedaling

Hey Folks!

We had an awesome last few weeks of Forest School full of excitement and adventure! Here are some the highlights below, and scroll all the way down to check out the pics.  Thanks for the amazing year and see you in September!

Mountain Biking

We’ve got a ton of newly built trails at Forest School for Mountian Biking, so took advantage of this with a couple of our classes.  Students wound their way through the meadows, hills and forest as they explored some of our favourite places (mysterious forest, maple forest) in a new way.  We also left the property to try out some local trails together, while geocacheing along the way!  Our kids were pretty tuckered out afterwards, but as we found out at our end of the year debrief, this was for some their favourite memory!

Ducks

Huey, Duey, Luey and Darkwing – 4 baby ducks that paid our Chickadees a visit a few weeks ago!  Students eagerly fed and took care of these wonderful little creatures who have found a second home at Forest School.  They built an elaborate play pen for them using all sorts of our “loose parts”.  When it was time to go, it was hard to say goodbye!

Geocacheing

Did you know that the Collingwood Library lends on GPS units with dozens of geocache locations uploaded?  It’s the ultimate scavenger hunt and our students rocked it uncovering 6 separate caches over the course of the days we did it.  Ask your kid about it and plan your next adventure – there’s so much to discover!

Paddling

While the location and type of boats we were paddling varied, one thing for sure was the same across the board – beautiful paddling weather (with a narrow escape one day!).  Our Friday group canoed along the Beaver River, for a peaceful quiet paddle with the river all to ourselves.  We enjoyed a shore lunch (and a special homemade treat from one of students – thanks!) and some swimming in the rapids.

Our other groups set their sites on the Nottawasaga.  Some groups took canoes, others took kayaks and some were even able to paddle all the way from the Sports Complex to Schooner Town.  We saw deer, otters, beavers, countless birds and more.  One thing we can guarantee is that a highlight for most was lunchtime – swimming and climbing at the sand dunes!

Our Chickadees braved the water, too, on the big pond at Bygone Days!  They paddled all over and spotted lots of turtles out in the sun, and even caught some frogs!

Fishing

Our big pond is alive with creatures at this time of year and if you are familiar with our program, you know that we’ve caught quite a few!  From nymphs to turtles and everything in between, our students love to hunt!  We traded in our nets (or rather in addition to them) and grabbed our fishing poles and paddled our final week.  Our students learned to tie knots, bait hooks and how to operate different styles of fishing reels, all while balancing in the water. The result was impressive – literally over 100 Rock Bass in a day.  And to top of it multiple perch, a first for the big pond!  A huge success for our students.  Throw in some stand-up paddle boarding and swimming and call it a good day (week!).

Whirlpool and Pier Jump

To end of the entire season, our Friday visited the whirlpool (behind Matthew Way) for some swimming and exploring in the Pretty River.  It’s a beautiful, naturally carved out hole in the river that you can “slide” down into on a natural rock slide.  Afterwards we headed to the Collingwood harbour where brave students leapt into the frigid bay – a great kick-off to summer!

We want to thanks all the parents, students and our entire FNS community for the awesome year of adventure, play, learning and so much more this year.  It was truly awesome!

See you in the Fall!

Matt, Krista and Kim (and the rest of the FNS team)

More Pics:

 

Fires and Shelters… and Bear-Hangs? Oh my.

Hey Folks!

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!

More pics:
Tuesday:

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

 

Helping Hands

Hey Folks!

Happy Solstice! After our core routines this week and a brainstorm on teamwork, our days differed immensely in what student-interests led us to.  We book-ended all days with sage and sit spots in the morning, and a fire at the end, but otherwise they were so unique, let’s sum them up separately.

TUESDAY

We had some eager helpers on Tuesday and started off by weeding the garden and planting some tomato plants in anticipation of our Fall Harvest next school year.  The majority of our day was spent “farming” and building gardens in our sit spots, developing clay factories (which turned into clay all over the place!), and harvesting wild edibles to eat in a salad.  Some lucky adventurers even gathered some wild strawberries!

Students also built a brand new fire pit, complete with rock ring which we used for our end of the day fire.  Despite the rain (or maybe because of?…), we still had a great time.  After a game of Capture the Flag, we even had time to hang our homemade bat house SW facing high in Willow Tree… we’ll see if anything moves in!

(PS – since we were on a camp trip, we didn’t have time to put up photos for Tuesday’s canoeing last week, so if you scroll to the very bottom, you’ll find some there.)

Wednesday

Our Wednesday class dove into what they love best – catching aquatic creatures and manipulating the movement of water with waterfalls, rapids and dug out riverbeds.  Everyone had a job in this project – digger, dammer, dumper  and more.  And what a lucky day we had with the discovery of many 4+ leaf clovers!!!

We headed out to our sit spots, and student-interest kept us there for most of the morning.  Like Tuesday, we saw students dive into the clay market (quite literally!) and create a whole bunch of infrastructure and objectives. Others could be found trying  their luck at fishing (no bites this time), collecting ample amounts of wild strawberries, transplanting  wild edibles into their personal gardens, and carving cutlery from wood.

Another reoccurring theme throughout the day was ants and their colonies and nests.  We had a lengthy and great debate about whether or not to capture some ants and create our own ants in a jar – and in the end, everyone agreed that we should leave these fellas be.  Later in the day the students even created an epic ant home (or mansion) and the Painted Turtle group sit spot!  And speaking of which, this area had quite the facelift with everyone pitching in to create a new reading circle with stumps and boards, and cleaning all the garbage along the way.

A big thanks to our volunteer parent, Jamila, who lent some helping hands of her own today!

Thursday

The pond, as usual, was a huge hit on Thursday and we were able to identify new species of critters that lurked under the leaves.  After our check-ins (and by popular demand) we played some team games including our favourite, Survival, where students learned that it’s not just humans who work together and lend a helping hand.  Afterwards (when the rain came briefly), we laid out and drew up plans for a future “Nature” playground that we want to develop at the site!  Students came up with some really practical, feasible and awesome ideas!  We hope to put some of them in place in the near future.

Before embarking on our afternoon, we held an impromptu funeral for “Max” the toad, a poor fella we came across today.  This was topped off with a great rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb on the the recorder, played by one of our students.  Throughout the day we visited some new places, including the reading circle created by Wed’s group and the fire pit created by Tues’ group, where student’s created their very own imaginative stories to share with each other around the fire.

Alas, some sad news – we say goodbye to Krista this week as she won’t be here next week! A HUGE THANKS for all you do for the students and the program!

Congrats to our Beads Recipients: 2 Tracking beads, a handful of Sit Spot bead, 2 Colouring beads, 2 Curiosity bead, 2 Music beads, 3 Littlerless Lunch beads, and 4 storytelling beads!

Next Week: Hard to believe it’s the last day of the year! We’d like to invite all families to our final wrap-up at 3:15 pm at Bygone Days.  It will take about 20 minutes.

Cheers,

Matt, Kim and Krista

More Photos:

Photo’s from TUES group last week:

Go(by!) fish!

Wow. There sure have been some incredible changes around the land at Bygone Days. Students have really taken to ensuring that all of our nature-tasks, like filling bird feeders and watering plants, are looked after upon arrival. This noteworthy interest and initiative certainly compliments their ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship and helps build that awesome connection with the land! And lately, they are keen to jump into all of the treats that Mother Earth gives us in the spring…especially by the pond! Throughout the week, we saw tadpoles, frogs, water bugs, leeches and, our personal favourite: the courageous painted turtles sunbathing on logs (and even venturing out to share in some sit spots!) Students love this up-close experience with nature and seem to have developed a deep connection – it is a beauty to see it unfold!

We traveled off-site for another field trip this week – the ever so desired fishing day! What a beautiful day to spend by the bay! We learned a lot about different casting and jigging techniques, re-familiarized ourselves with fishing knots, explored with all sorts of lures, witnessed some creative minnow traps, hooked our own worms… and became especially close with the high-density goby, an invasive bottom feeding fish. We had some first-time catches, teasing nibbles, and a lot of patience for the great bambino!  On Thursday, we headed back a little early to try our luck on the big pond at the school – no catches but a few nibbles!

Students really enjoyed trying their hands at fishing this week and after our awesome learning experience, all students earned their fisher-person bead!  A special shout out to a rod-rescue mission by a Snowy Owl on Wednesday and an epic “catch of the day” by Matt (it was a fly away t-shirt!).

Additional beads earned:
1 Sit Spot Bead
4 Reflection Beads
2 Nature Lover Beads
2 Bravery beads

Three Housekeeping Items:
– With the incredibly warm weather upon us, we would like to remind parents to help students pack and remember their water bottles and hats.
– We have some sun screen and bug spray, but if you have a particular favourite, please bring it!
– As tempting as it might be to wear flip flops, please ensure that your child also has proper running shoes (rain boots for ponds, if you’d like!) for all of our busy day adventures (it’s poison ivy and tick season and we want to be extra careful). Closed-toed paddling sandals with heel straps are a great all around shoe.
-As the days get hotter, please send your kids along with a swimsuit as we may have opportunities to jump in the water.

Lastly, an additional reminder to register soon for next year, if you are interested, as it is beginning to fill up.

Thanks again! See you next week, as we take a closer look at bees!

Happy Trails,

Matt, Kim and Krista

More Photos:

And we’re off!

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

“Pond”er this!

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’

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

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!

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

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, journaling beads and 2 knot beads (our first time given this out!).  Great job everyone!

That’s all for now!

Matt and Kim