Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Winter Solstice, an Epic Hunt and Giant Tubes

Posted on by

Hey Everyone,

We had a wonderful last week of FNS and enjoyed adventuring around our nature playground in the freshly fallen snow. Of course, what better way to say good bye to some of our favourite places than by spending some quality time in them! Throughout the week, students enjoyed visiting various places, like Riverside Campsite, Ducky’s Campsite, Mysterious Forest, or circumnavigating the pond. It has been quite powerful to hear stories and reminisce about so many positive experiences and memories from the fall along the way. Your children have truly built a deep connection to the land and to one another.

On Tuesday, students spent some time building new snow castles and tapping into their creativity and imaginations to play and work together with their natural loose parts. They collaboratively moved the large pipes from our obstacle course to build an incredible human-size subnivean zone, and of course this also became an incredible new space for creative play and our new favourite competitive game, ga-ga ball! This treat was used and appreciated all week by other classes.
On Wednesday, we were treated with the presence of a metal detector brought in by one of our students. We went on treasure hunts and were rewarded with the uncovering of a lost tool from earlier in the Fall. Students also extended our collaborative loose parts to build a giant slide behind the school house, which is only getting more and more fun with the coming snow!
A significant experience arose for us on Thursday, as we were on our way to Mysterious Forest. Students followed some interesting tracks that led us to an up close understanding and investigation of the life-cycle. We uncovered the story of a fox vs. rabbit battle scene, including a sacrificed rabbit, scavenger prints from crows, and happy solitary fox prints trotting across the newly frozen pond. Students were captivated by this experience and truly intrigued by the layers that could be unpacked from a successful, natural hunting experience. Students brainstormed that the fox (and other scavengers) gain food for themselves/their family; birds could use the remaining fur for nests; and overall we gained a deeper understanding of predator-prey relationships and population size. And although we mourned the rabbit, we thanked her for her sacrifice and remembered our significant “Blueberry” experience from 2 years ago, where after a discovering a similar scenario, a few weeks later we were graced with the presence of four little fox pups, allowing for a more thorough and deeper understanding of the life-cycle.

Friday we spent time adventuring out to our Riverside Camp Site and around the big pond, following tracks, and creating stories. We enjoyed creating challenges and working together (or competing) to gain our personal bests, and even had time to explore the buildings of our village.
Throughout the week we also celebrated Winter Solstice with the lightning of ice candles, looking into the science behind shortest day of the year and its significance, and learning about some traditions from different cultures (looking at the pomander, an oranges studded with cloves) and other stories from the past. This is a very important day of the year for us and marks a new beginning.
We closed our fall session by gathering in a fire ceremony and sharing our favourite memories and experiences together. What a fun and thoughtful way to kick off the holidays!

We wish everyone a wonderful holiday, filled with joy, family, friends, adventure and play! Thanks for taking part in this Fall Adventure with us and we look forward to seeing you in the Winter!

Matt, Kim and Tamara

More Pics:

Snow Cities and Snowshoes

Posted on by

Hi again folks!

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!

Cheers,

The Forest School Team

More Pics:

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Survival Olympics (or Mary had a little lamb…)

Posted on by

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.

More Pics:

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

Posted on by

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

There’s a lot of noise in silence

Posted on by

Hey Folks!

We’d like to extend a HUGE welcome to our new students and families and a welcome back to our returning students! We had a good start to our first week at Forest School and luckily, though it called for rain, we seemed to miss the worst of it!

This week we focused on getting to know each other, community-building and becoming acquainted with a small portion of the property. We began the day as usual with a smudge, morning circle and other core routines. We also engaged in some get-to-know you activities, such as designing our own personal flag to highlight our favourite activities and passions. We will hang this in our classroom for the semester.

Students eagerly picked out their sit spots and began creating and imagining all the things they intend to build/do/create there. Some were content to just be and absorb the changes that Mother Natures will bring. We spent some quiet time reflecting in our spots and came to a consensus: there is a lot of noise in silence. Blue Jays, crickets and wind in the leaves just to name a few! We found ourselves immersed in our surrounding. We all came away loving our own sit spot experience… and eager to return next week!

The students jumped at the chance for some exploratory time, where imaginations, teamwork and good old fashioned outdoor fun came alive. The afternoon brought our first bonfire of the year, where we added the ashes from the final community fire of last year and made some thoughtful goals for this year of new challenges, budding friendships, and pushing comfort zones. In anticipation for next week, where some might want to try earning their fire bead, we spent some time learning the basics of fire-building (even in the rain!) and how to use fire respectfully. It was a great start to building our new community.

Speaking of beads, we’ve got a whole bunch of new ones this year, as well as some classics – click here for the list! Don’t know what beads are yet? Check out our core routines page. There are even some that can be done at home. Along with this, we made our medallions to store our beads on. On one side, children wrote their names, and the other they drew or wrote their spirit/favourite animal or plant. This also gave students the chance to use tools for the first time this year by hand drilling their own holes!

Next Week:
Survival Skills – fires, shelters and more!

We also still have a few spaces available! If you know anyone that may be interested please share with them. Thanks!

That’s all for now, we look forward to the semester and exploring alongside everyone!

Matt, Kim and Tamara

More pics:

Escape Rooms, Memories and Marshmallows…

Posted on by

Wow! What a beautiful last week of Forest School! We had a wonderful time reflecting on what we’ve learned and experienced throughout the year and we sure had fun reminiscing about a lot of funny, meaningful memories that stood out! It’s so worthwhile to pause and reflect on these experiences together – so much has happened in just a few months!

After our morning circle and a story, students had the opportunity to say goodbye to their sit-spots. Some offered a piece of white sage to say thank you for all of the learning and reflecting that they’ve engaged in at their chosen spot. Some drew in their journals or created new medallions for their Sit Spots. Some chose to simply sit and reflect quietly. Sit Spots are just one way that students connect with the land in a meaningful way at Forest School. It’s been really special on our end to be able to witness this relationship develop with nature. Students seem to get a lot from just sitting and being still in Nature. We wonder if it’s something they will continue to do on their own this summer because so many of our students really looked forward to starting their days off in their Sit-Spots. Let us know!

We had a fun new challenge for Forest School this week where students had to work together to complete the first ever Forest School Escape Room! They collaborated to gather clues, solve problems, and build on prior knowledge to find the secret antidote (and marshmallows!) required to save the world! Everyone was able to successfully complete the challenge in less than an hour – one group made it with just 43 seconds left! Afterwards, we enjoyed a campfire and basked in our wonderful learning community… celebrating appreciations, new friendships, and hopeful summer play dates!

In the afternoon, we had an array of more student-led activities to celebrate our final day. Some included exploring the heritage site and venturing into the old buildings, playing a final game of Survival and Capture the Flag, and the classic Bubble Tag. It was an engaging way to wrap up our school-year!

A special thank you to the families who could join us for our closing ceremony! We will have the videos uploaded soon and send you a link! Remember if you haven’t picked up your NEW FOREST SCHOOL T-Shirt, you can do so Monday between 8:30-9:15am at Bygone Days during the Kids Camp Registration.

Parents and Families, we want to thank you for making this program possible! Thank you for believing in our approach to education and understanding the value of risky play and connecting with nature. We trust you will have a healthy, happy summer packed with adventures, family time and play! Hope to see you on the trails or by the water!

Take Care!

Matt, Kim and Krista

More Photos:

Helping Hands

Posted on by

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:

Welcome Summer!

Posted on by

Hi friends,

Working on our “Selfie”

We welcomed our last day of Forest School with positive vibes and though all students were sad to leave, we knew summer break had to come at some point – and who doesn’t love summer!? Last week we asked our students “What would you love to do for our last day?” which was a super exciting question because this led to a full day of activities and play directed by students. Our ideas ranged from games, building objects, testing our skills, learning more about wild edibles and team bonding. Being Forest School students the rain and ominous clouds didn’t wash them out, it actually gave the students more excitement, energy and a day full of messy, mucky play!

A huge thank you for all our students who showed and shared some amazing things today! We had Izzy show us her Earth Ranger badge! She is one of many students protecting painted turtles and their habitat – amazing! If you would like more information about becoming an Earth Ranger please visit www.earthrangers.com. We also had Alice show us her favourite vest that was hand made by her Grandma, Emily introduced us to her wolf stuffy named “Snow” and Taven gave us a sneak peek into his tooth and rock collection! We also headed out to a new spot by the Beaver River for most of our day, this burned off some energy. Along the way our kids found wild grape tendrils, wild black caps (not ready to eat) and the start of crab apple trees.

Within our afternoon some students worked on whittling their arrows, while some tested and practiced with the “maze game”. Students also starting building a HUGE birds nest! This project was taken home by Aaron, who we know will continue to build upon it and make a great home for birds. This afternoon we tested our kids with 3 tasks. Our first task was to make it through our “maze game” all students helped each other along the way, which made it easier to make it to the end. Our second task was communication and hand eye coordination with “throw me the water balloon” game – we have some great water balloon tossers as it turns out! Our last task was our scavenger hunt! Our kids had 19 things to find, which came easy for some – it was great to see the different things our students picked and noticed.

Thank you to all our students who participated in Forest School this year, as well with all the parents for driving your young ones to our program! We had another amazing semester full of laughter, tears, self discoveries, learning new things every day, building upon our skills and too many memories to count! Remember to keep exploring and discovering new things!

“Congratulations today is your day. You’re off to great places, you’re off and away. You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re off on your own and you know what you know, and you are the one who will decide where to go.” – Dr. Seuss.

Have an amazing summer break!

Krista and Vicky

Kayak or Canoe…..

Posted on by

Hi Everyone,

We enjoyed another awesome field trip this week to the Beaver River located in Heathcote. This river is a local favourite of ours, especially if we want to see an abundance of wild life!

Each week at Forest School we are reminded of how much of a caring community we have, and field trips bring out the best in us! After our morning routines each class bounced into the vans anticipating the excitement of our last trip before summer break. Kayaking and Canoeing were the options for the day, and while some felt more comfortable leading their own boat, others took turns paddling and looking for wild life. Some of the amazing finds were painted turtles, leeches, birds, frogs, slugs, toads, and snakes.

Our week also brought mixed weather, which didn’t slow anyone down! Within our afternoon our students took advantage of what the Heathcote property had to offer. Some students ate wild strawberries, worked on their slack lining skills, climbed the willow trees and had an epic frog hunt! Our students showed off their creativity by building lego towers and life sized lego men and even created a student led game called “capture” (which was a huge hit). We also took a crack at attempting to solve some of our wooden puzzles, which turns out are a lot harder than they look. 3 out of 5 were accomplished!

A HUGE thanks to Carley and Tamara for stepping in this week for Matt and Kim! We would love to have you back!

Next week – Helping hands!

See you next week!

Matt, Kim, Krista, Carley and Tamara

Row, row, row your boat!

Posted on by

Hi Friends,

This week we welcomed Collingwood’s Forest School students to join us on our adventure down one of our favourite rivers – the Beaver River. Sadly, no actual beavers were spotted today. However, we would like to send out a huge thank-you to Brian – our local plant ID expert, for showing the students some wild edibles this morning. Our students had the chance to eat black lochs flowers (full of flavour and a sweet “pop”), and grape tendrils (“grape arms” that are a bit sour) and mint (ahh, refreshing). We highly suggest trying these wild treats, OH – and our potato towers are are becoming taller than us, and will be ready to pick by the end of summer!

This afternoon during our group paddle down the Beaver River, our students came across frogs, lots of different birds, a cool water beetle, leeches, fish, crayfish, a garter snake, and even a painted turtle! We challenged and pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones, which earned some students very well deserved beads. Nearing the end of our day we said good-bye to our new friends, and focused on one of our favourite activities – frog hunting! We must say, our students are becoming experts at catching frogs, it’s a good thing we don’t eat them – or there would’t be any left to catch! Today there were 7 peer support beads, 1 bravery bead, 2 litter less lunches, 1 Al bead and 1 leadership bead.

Next week – Summer Celebration!!! Our last day of Forest School will consist of games, challenges and amazing memories! What a bittersweet day we have to look forward to!

Until next week,

Krista

Exit mobile version