Imagine being a baby squirrel and accidentally falling out of your drey (tree squirrel nest). Now imagine being an eagle flying over the forest and with your keen eye, you see an unprotected meal right for the taking? Our students looked at this scenario from both perspectives today and while some thought playing the squirrel was stressful others realized playing the predator was also tricky, and not as easy as some might think.
As much as we love the rain, we were lucky enough to see some sun finally! Some students revisited our colour walk from last week and talked about the magic of change and the gifts Mother Nature provide us with. We found some pretty magical leaves and recreated them on our magical flags and wands. We also revisited our “nests” again to see if their nature offering were taken. We worked as a team this afternoon and collected an enormous amount of acorns, and we mean enormous – our educated guess was roughly around 600 total, who knew this nut was so popular!
Our older students ventured into the forest today and discovered a family of salamanders, forest wands, building bio-domes, and even had some time time to start working on their carving skills. What an incredibly busy day that flew by! Until next week friends.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we were excited to hear all about your child’s long weekend stories! Our question of the day was: What have you noticed in our environment? And we love hearing the answers because they always vary so much. Ranging from the colours of the leaves, no birds or sun in the sky, that it feels colder, or that they didn’t see any animals running around. This led into a great day full of imagination and role play.
We used our childlike wonders and jumped right into the role of animals that either hibernate or collect and store their food for the winter, but still stay active. Our day consisted of scavenging, predator and prey, den building and story telling through games and child-led activities. As per usual while on our journey we decided to take a “Colour Walk” which was to discover all the many colours Fall has to offer us and nature provided in abundance.
We also found 3 Red Backed Salamanders, discovered new land and invented a new breed of mammal – Egglets. Please ask your child about them, or even better ask them to show you!
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!
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!
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.
This week the classes learned all about Ecosystems. After our core routines, we started off by coming up with a working definition of what Ecosystems are and how they connect all over the world. It was awesome to lean on the prior-knowledge of our students – we’ve got a clever bunch!
After our lessons, we threw on our scientist hat and headed for the field to make observations and record data. Our objective was to mark off a rectangular section of “ecosystem”, measure it and search for all living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) things. The students jumped to the task with magnifying glasses in-hand and found some really cool things – robin eggs, insect eggs and nests, snails galore, mushrooms, and much more. After a “museum walk” to view everyone’s site, it was quite evident that there’s much more than meets the eye in a relatively small area.
After telling a legend, the afternoon had us exploring more ecosystems as we set out on a hike to the far edges of our property. More specifically, we were looking at the biodiversity between ecosystems, in the ecotones. It’s awesome what you can find when you slow down and take a look – the remains of a Northern Flicker, a Turkey nest, edible trout lilies, and that’s just to name a few.
You never know what you’re going to get at Forest School and different days saw many different things happen this week:
TuesdaY
Students were really engaged with ring toss yet again. They also got a chance to become the food chain in a serious rock, paper, scissors competition. This group was the first group to discover the remains of the Northern Flicker (and they chose to leave the beautiful feathers there for the other groups to see – yay LNT principles and nature lovers!). A big portion of them also started work on carving projects, and as always enjoyed some time in their sit spots.
Wednesday
A really cool thing happened on Wednesday – during our exploration one of the students noticed his magnifying glass warmed up his hand. And from there we naturally had to make a fire from it. So we tried and lo and behold, the char cloth caught quick. So we tried other materials – paper, birch bark, tree resin, wood – to see what would happen. We eventually were able to make a fire only using the sun!!!
During a game of camouflage, this group also accidentally (and quite literally) stumbled upon a turkey nest. The mama turkey flew off and we quickly left the area in hopes that she’ll return.
THURSDAY
Wow! What a hot day! So nice we even had to cool down in the spring, and had our first real day where we could take our shoes off this Spring. (And the lightning storms held off just for us!)
The students on Thursday jumped into the roles of Producers, Consumers and Decomposers for a better understanding of food chains. On a sadder note, we experienced this cycle first hand after discovering that our mallard nest was attacked by a hungry predator. We worked through these heavy feelings with the group and realized that this loss is an important part of the food chain. Soon after, we were treated when we discovered a healthy baby of another species – a snapping turtle!
Of course you may have noticed some stinky breath coming from your child after school this week… Tuesday we came across a Leek patch and of course the Wed and Thurs groups had to try!
Congrats to our bead recipients: 3 Leadership Beads, 2 Curiosity Bead, 3 Show and Tell, and 1 Craft bead (for homemade charcloth!)
Next week: Projects!!! We’re going to let our imaginations run wild.
We had a fun week at Forest School exploring the wonderful and intricate world of Animals. And we were SURROUNDED by them this week. A hare one morning, a groundhog, lots of squirrels, our resident chipmunk and even a bat that literally hung out on the school house all day. Oh and of course we were inundated with birds! We saw dozens of different types and listened attentively to all their songs – it’s getting us really excited for next week’s Bird focus. In prep for this we set up some big feeders to draw them in and made our own smaller Easter Egg bird feeders to put in our sit spots.
After some exploratory play and our morning routines, we took some extended time at our sit spots. These spots are really coming together – check out the pictures below for a sample of the cool shelters and creations our kids are making. The students are really becoming stewards of their areas and adding their own flare.
Back to the subject of the day: Animals. In the past, we’ve worked a lot with animals – tracking, identification, adaptations, fish, birds, insects and more – and we wanted to build on this knowledge. So we tested our knowledge on animals tracks and found out that we could use a little refresher! We took a first hand look at Aden’s paws and followed some tracks laid down by some local fauna. Afterwards, we really wanted to emphasize an understanding of the needs of animals and what better way than with a game of Survival? Students were herbivores, omnivores and carnivores and became part of the food chain. The only goal? To survive!!
Later on we built on this with a couple lessons on carrying capacity and limiting factors. As part of our lesson, chairs slowly started disappearing so students had to share, until ultimately there was not enough space (and thus we figured out our “Classroom Carrying Capacity”). Then we went outside and became deer fighting for resources. We graphed the results over a “15 year” period (yay math!) and drew out conclusions from our findings. We took this one step further by making predictions and looking at real world applications (ie 7 year hare/lynx cycle).
On Thursday we had an impromptu Easter Egg hunt when we came across an abandoned Mallard nest with an egg. Although this is unfortunate, we learned a good lesson in avoiding wildlife (some of our LNT principles). Since we know it has been abandoned for a while, we are going to see if it we can hatch it under a light.
All in all, a real fun day. Congrats to our bead recipients: 2 fire beads, 2 litterless-lunch beads and 5 fire keeper beads.
Next week:
BIRDS!! This is always a fun day and the property has an incredible amount of our avian friends right now. If you’ve got binoculars, please bring them!
We don’t think we could have asked for a better winter day to enjoy our first adventure with Ice fishing! There was an abundance of emergent learning, along with some role play learning! This was another week diving into our “knot book” and taking the time to learn some key knots of the day! We tested our ability with the “clinch knot” (which we used later in the day) and the “fisherman’s knot” – single and a double. Our knot knowledge continues to grow each week, and our students have been catching on so quickly! We were all super excited about the idea of catching a fish, what would we do? Eat it or let it go? While we did not catch anything we did learn some valuable lessons. You need to be quiet around your fishing hole, you must have patience; different types of lures attract different fish, and never bet on catching anything! What an amazing day!
We started our day by looking at the appearance of a fish and learning key features. The task was to match up the words to certain body parts and while some were easier than others (eyes, mouth, gills, scales) others were a bit more challenging (dorsal fin, anal fin, percotral fin). Overall our students were able to identify 2- 4 body parts. You should ask your child which body part they remember!
Most of our students had never fished before, and those who had were great leaders! Before heading out onto the “Willow Pond” we made sure we talked about ice safety while creating boundaries.
Our kids were super stoked to immerse themselves in learning to create their own fishing poles (wood string, hook and bait – pepperoni sticks) while talked about lures, weights, hooks, jigging, and casting. Phew!
It’s a good thing we have some pretty strong kids in our class because they were introduced to the “Auger”! Drilling a hole through the ice is hard work, and the kids learned that very quickly! They all had the opportunity to create their own fishing hole, and getting to experience the feeling of breaking through the ice was such a relief. Between our busy day of fishing and drilling we had time to play games “fishy fishy”, make snow angels, huddle around the fire to keep warm, toboggan, soak up the sun, and oh yeah, build an ice rink! We are hoping that it stays cold enough so that we can check on it next week, and have a little fun!
The start of our Ice rink
Just like a lot of animals, fish live a life full of challenges and obstacles everyday and not all make it to adulthood. Our last task of the day was to look at the ‘Life Cycle’ of a fish! But we didn’t just sit down and talk about it, we wanted to become the fish, and for that we have to learn the ‘Forest School’ way! Outside, running, macro-model learning! Our students had to start as eggs and become adults while overcoming fast moving water, turbines, large predators, hurdles and man made objects such as fish ladders. The goal was to get back to the spawning beds to where they were born! Not all fish survived…but that’s the wild!
Great job to all our students today, we are super impressed with all their respect, love, honesty and wisdom stickers! There was also 4 Reflection Beads, 1 Peer Support Bead, 1 Craft Bead, 1 Colouring Bead and 1 Show and Tell Bead handed out, WAY TO GO!!!
Next Week – Field Trip! We will be heading to the top of the Escarpment and visiting Scenic Caves Nordic Centre. Cross Country Skiing is on the menu as well!
Today we welcomed back winter with open arms, excited to spend our whole day exploring the snow. It couldn’t have been a more perfect time because this week, our topic was “Snow”. We also welcomed our guest Tomoko visiting from Barrie, and moving to Japan for 2 years. She participated in our morning routines (check ins, fire starting, smudge circle and shelter building).
She was kind enough to bring us a gift (paint and paint brushes), so we thought we would show her the Forest School way and return the favor with a gift of our own. We made Tomoko her very own medallion to keep as a reminder of her time with us. She received Fire, Friendship, Shelter and Travel Beads for going outside of her comfort zone, learning new skills, and being such great company to us all. Thank you Tomoko for visiting us it was a pleasure to have you!
With the start of our day challenged by puzzles, games, looking at different types of snowflakes (needle, column, prisms, and dendrites), and building inventions, we thought we would begin with a fun “Snow Hypothesis”. Our task started with 3 mason jars and some snow. We packed our jars with snow, and recorded our observations and measurements. The conclusions varied from student to student, but we all agreed that the water level was at least half of the snow we packed.
Jar #1- 6 cups of snow – hard packed to the top
Jar #2 – 3.5 cups of snow – loosely packed to the top
Jar #3 – 2.5 cups of snow – Very loosely packed to the top
We then thought back to a couple of weeks ago when we discussed animal survival, and keeping warm in the winter. The long awaited “Quinzee building” was the perfect activity to get hands on and build shelters similar to those of wild animals in our area. We learned very quickly that many hands make light work, and it takes a lot of muscle power, and endurance to collect all the snow. But that’s what were here for – to learn, be a team, and have fun!
Thank you Luke for helping out your fellow peers and telling us what you know about Quinzee shelters. After diluting food colouring and water our students connected to their inner creativity and made their house a home! So much teamwork went into all of our buildings – 4 in total and all the kids were very proud of their shelter bead.
Taking time in-between building, and decorating our Quinzee shelters, we took advantage of all the fresh powder, and I mean POWDER!…. 3 feet was the deepest we found. Everyone strapped on some snowshoes, grabbed a toboggan and headed to Fossil Mountain to enjoy the beauty of the untouched, fluffy snow. We worked up a sweat hiking, tobogganing, more hiking and even more tobogganing.
Thank you Dax for bringing in your Show and Tell item – home made bouncy ball. Something we will have to try later in the semester.
Big week for stickers and beads 2 Fire Beads, 1 Litter-less lunch Bead, 1 Show and Tell Bead, 7 Shelter Bead, 1 Leadership Bead, 1 Winter Wonderland Bead and our first “Al” Bead for kindness and humility.
Great job to Lucy for starting your first fire today with ONE match!
Next Week – “1 fish 2 fish red fish blue fish” All about fish and maybe if were lucky and have some good bait we can catch a fish!
Finally some snow for us to play in! We took full advantage of it this week by diving into it (figuratively and literally). Our day focused on different scientific aspects of snow. To start the day, we wrote down everything we knew about snow on paper, then we crumpled them up and had a “snow”ball fight.
After we shared what we already knew, we shifted gears to discover new things. We debated why snow appears white; we studied the anatomy of snowflakes with magnifying glasses in hand; we even made a bit of snow by throwing boiling water in the air (though this works better at colder temps). We also made predictions about melting and how much water would remain from 3 cups of snow (FYI Snow-water equivalent varies with temperature – we found about a 6:1 ratio on both days). Later in the day we were able to apply this to real life in our sit spots, noticing that the ice levels were up due to the early January melt.
After a few games and some core routines, we asked ourselves – So, how is snow warm? We took a look at snow as an insulator and built on our past knowledge of animal survival in the subnivean zone by creating a village of Quinzees. We even diluted food colouring in water to make “paint” for the snow and have the most colorful Quinzees in town.
Colourful Quinzee City!
Of course, with emergent learning our focus there was always time for the establishment of a “firework” factory (pylons filled with snow, then colored) to open up and sell “fireworks” in exchange for snow balls. Oh, and of course a first hand look at avalanches with snow tumbling off roofs!
Congratulations to our bead recipients! 3 Bingo Beads, 5 Litter-less Lunch Beads for 4 weeks straight with no waste in their lunches, 1 Teaching Bead for a wonderful lesson on building a Quinzee, 1 Bravery Bead, 1 “Al’s” Bead for consistent kindness and humility, 5 Shelter Beads, and 2 Curiosity Beads.
Also, a big THANKS to Natasha for stepping in for Kim this week as she was on a Winter camping trip.
Next Week:
Fishing – most likely this won’t be ice fishing as we were hoping due to the lack of sturdy ice. We will, however, still learn about fish and get a chance at fishing!
