This week at Forest School we wanted to take our kids off the property and explore some of the Bruce Trail that is located right in our own “backyard”. Words could not express how much fun we had today exploring a new part of the Bruce Trail, some of our hiking goals were to discover “Standing Rock” and find the newly renovated “Frank’s Lime Kiln”. Let the adventure begin!
Before we headed out on our journey, we took a slight detour to “Fossil Mountain” to take time to uncover some fossils by peeling apart layers of shale rock. The discoveries made were amazing! Our students got their hands dirty and found different types of rock, fossils, shells, seeds and ice.
Our first trek started at the Nottawasaga Lookout, located just outside of Duntroon. The “Standing Rock” trail is a 1.2 km side loop that encompasses flat and rocky terrain, including caves and crevasses. Bravery and Leadership beads were earned all throughout our afternoon escapade. Our kids ducked, crawled and slid down 5 ice slides, it gave them an easy head start for the rest of our hike! Before we headed back to school, we wanted to let the kids explore a 150-year-old kiln. This kiln had been built in 1860 and was restored in 2015 – the outcome is beautiful. The kids also had a great time learning a little bit about our local pioneer history.
It was great to see our class being so cohesive through out the caves. Our comfort zones were tested, and challenge-by-choice was presented. Moving slowly, and communicating was top notch today! We also worked towards leadership, peer support, spotting, encouraging one another and trust. We are so proud of everyone, you all worked so hard.
Beads and Stickers were abundant today! 8 Bravery Beads, 1Show and Tell Bead, 1 Travel Bead, 1 Leadership Bead, 2 Peer Support, 1 Curiosity Bead and 1 Nature Lover Bead. As usual love, respect and wisdom stickers were earned as well.
Next Week – This will be our last class for the Winter semester, can you believe it!? We will be doing a recap of everything we have learned over the semester, with lots of laughs, fun, and games. We are excited for the spring semester to start and to meet all the new faces!
This week on Tuesday we celebrated International Forest Day and Wednesday we celebrated International Water Day. I guess the world kicks environmental protection into high gear come Spring! And what better way to celebrate than check out some of our local protected areas!
We headed out to explore some new wonders in our “backyard” at the Nottawasaga Lookout with physical literacy on our mind. Our goal was to explore the crevasses and hiking trails and ultimately uncover some caves. And what better way to celebrate the arrival by spring than with a ton of SNOW?! We slipped and slid our way down into the crevasses, contorted our bodies through impossibly small cracks and discovered new amazing things over and over again. And we had the whole place to ourselves, with just the birds to keep us company.
On Wednesday, we also had time to check out and eat lunch at Devil’s Glen lookout, and hike down in to the valley to escape the wind. What a beautiful place and worth much more exploring!
Many students pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and took on a lot of scary (perceived) risks. Other students were great at knowing and respecting their own limits in our challenge-by-choice activities. Teamwork and helping each other out became the norm. And patience – everyone moved slow to be safe and encouraged one another. It’s amazing to see a community thrive. And as bonus, we even found some small caves!
All in all, everyone had a blast and left feeling proud of their personal accomplishments throughout the day. Everyone received a bravery bead! We also gave out 5 Peer Support beads, 1 Leadership bead, 1 Curiosity bead, 1 Nature Lover bead and 1 Al’s bead. Congrats!
Next Week: Our last class for the Winter Semester!! It will be a celebration of all we’ve done; a recap of our time and a look forward to our Spring semester!
See you next week,
Matt and Kim
PS. Our apologies for all the muddy clothes Tuesday!!! It warmed up quite a bit!
Collingwood is a community that offers activities for every season and for all ages, and at Forest School we tend to stay in the woods and discover nature and explore the unknown, but for this week we wanted to take our day outside of our classroom and discover what is available in our community! We started out the day by discussing what makes a community (teamwork, caring), how it make us feel, (proud, safe and happy) and what does it offer us (health care, good schools and protection). Within Collingwood we have some amazing programs that run all year round, and continue to connect and help each other. With more brainstorming our kids talked about food banks, community gardens, green space, trail systems, humane society and supporting local produce and products.
We also started our own Forest School Food Bank Drive! We encourage all students to bring in food that has a long lasting shelf life. Any donation would be greatly appreciated! What a great way to start our day.
To start our journey we headed to the new Collingwood fire department located at 45 High Street, we had the opportunity to meet the firemen, sit in the trucks, learn all about their everyday equipment and even sprayed the hose! Firemen are a huge part of our community and trained to keep us safe in so many different situations! A huge Thank you to Brian, Cody, Jamie, Matt and Steven for all your help and letting us explore the Fire station!
We also decided to go for a hike, but our hike started at the Museum, and participated in a Story Walk created by the Healthy Kids Community Challenge. We got our local trail map and mapped our hike – right down the Train-Trail. The Story was “Perfect Snow” by Barbra Reid, about two boys – Jim and Scott, who want to make a snowman army and a huge, colossal snow fort. At the end of our story we took time to create our own mini snowman army! Within our hike we also passed more activities that are available to our community – dog park, learning center, police station, parks and gardens. Another Thank you to the Rock Shop for the amazing rocks our students received today!
Some artwork from local students
Our last stop of the day was to visit the Public Library. We checked out all the amazing artwork that our local public schools had been working on. The exhibits were grades 1-3 and from various schools within our community. We also bit into another Healthy Kids Community Challenge and ate some local apples. We celebrated “The Great Big Crunch” to support healthy snacking for our local students.
At the end of our day we found ourselves very grateful that we live in a community that takes care of each other and everything is very accessible. Everything we did today was free, and there is so much more to explore within our community. So grab a map and find yourself outside!
All of our students earned Travel Beads today, along with well deserved Respect, Love and Wisdom stickers!
Next week – Happy March Break to all our students! We will also be running our normal program through out this week. It will also be a surprise day for our kids!
This week at Forest School we took a look at Community Building. We started off with some team-building games then brainstormed all sorts of ideas about what is community and what makes a community. There were a lot of interesting insights, from thoughts about our Forest School community, to our Collingwood (and beyond) community and even a discussion around our global community. The students starting rhyming off cool initiatives that are happening here – community gardens, food banks, adopt-a-highway, trail-systems and green spaces, Coldest Night of the Year, and much more – so we decided to explore!
“Ants” on a log – teambuilding
Lava Pit – teambuilding
We got out our map of the city and the students found the best route to some key places to check out in our town. We went on a tour of Little Free Libraries – if you’ve never heard of this it’s worth checking out the website here. It’s simple: take a book and leave book! There are at least 3 of them in Collingwood – one that we didn’t even know about until students told us about it and we checked it out.
Little Free Library at Kinsmen Park
Little Free Library on Bush St.
With the Tuesday group, we went on a hike afterwards, but not just any old hike. This was a Story Walk that began at the Collingwood Museum. Every few hundred meters was another page to read, until we finished the book. This is another thoughtful initiative executed by Healthy Kids Challenge Collingwood.
Story Walk
With the Wednesday group, we decided to check out the community gardens and then head to a local green space to play around and reflect on the benefits of having parks in the community.
Free Spirit Gardens Community Garden
Forest inspired Playground
After being inspired by these projects, we returned back to the School. After a quick lunch, we jumped into our own projects. Some students made community hammocks for our school and mittens with the sewing machine, and others worked hard on developing our very own Little Free Library with reclaimed materials. Others designed their own parks or wrote their very own stories to put in the Library or eventually create their own Story Hike – we had a lot of options for our projects. And on Wednesday, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get out the kite kits and take advantage of the wind. Since the kites didn’t do so well, plastic bags became the kite of choice, and we even had a giant tarp up it the air. It was a creative and inspiring day to say the very least.
Making a hammock!
Both groups combined to start our own LFL from reclaimed materials
Writing a story for our LFL or our own Story Walk
Congrats to our bead recipients: 1 Show and Tell Bead and Winter Warriors.
Next Week:
We arerunning during March Break and since we have already done a Maple Syrup day, our programming is still TBD – you can bet we’ll be outside though.
If you have any old books you’d like to donate to our Little Free Library, that would be greatly appreciated! Any genre and for any age. Thanks!
We were expecting bitter cold, blowing wind, lots of snow, and we came incredibly prepared with our helmets, goggles, extra layers, warm socks and positive attitudes! But low and behold, we were graced with a beautiful, sunny day, light snow and lots of powder! Before we went skiing we wanted to take some time and celebrate Valentines Day with encouraging words and showing love for one another.
Our kids received paper with character traits we all possess. Examples were Playful, Funny, Leader and Confident. They had to choose one student for one trait, and by the end our students were pleased to read all the amazing things their peers think! We will keep all the papers on the wall to remind ourselves what we are, and what we could work towards!
Our adventure started with heading up to Scenic Caves Nordic Centre. Our new hard skill was to learn Cross Country Skiing. “When we get to the top of the hill, you never know where it’s going to take you” – Lucy.
Our kids adapted very quickly to skiing and for those who had experience, it was a great opportunity for a student led lesson. Before we headed out onto the trails one of our Painted Turtles – Layne – took charge and taught his fellow classmates the do and don’ts about skiing. We covered falling, getting up, pole etiquette, putting skis on and off, hills (pizza plow and monster step) and of course how to tuck. Despite the information overload, we soaked it all up and headed out onto the trails!
Hills, hills and more hills, our kids couldn’t get enough of them! If you ever find yourself at Scenic Caves and you would like to see where we explored to go Easy Peezy, Lemon Squeezy, Lookout Point and Georgian View Return.
After a well-deserved lunch and hot chocolate break we then explored the Suspension Bridge! We hiked down into a valley where we got out of our comfort zones and earned some bravery beads, and crossed the 420’ bridge which stands 100 feet from the valley floor! A cool fact about the bridge is that it moves with the wind, so when we walked across we made it move even more! Great job to all who crossed it twice, we have some very brave kids in our class!
Congratulations to everyone who earned their beads and stickers today – Bravery, Leadership, Peer support, Respect and Love among many more!
Next Week – It’s a wild world and we plan on exploring as much as we can! We also will be looking into Nature Photography so if your child has a small camera to use for the day, please bring it along!
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!
You could smell the team spirit in the air today! We hosted our first annual “Winter Olympics” and the Weather Gods were on our side bringing us snow! Our students were put to the test today, mentally and physically and came out on top! Before our games started we had to decide which countries our groups were going to represent, Canada or Switzerland! We then proceeded with the games by running around our pond in a relay race style torch run! “Let the games begin”.
Start of our torch run.
Team Switzerland
Team Canada
Our first game of the day was Broom ball! It was a perfect way to introduce teamwork, hand eye coordination and communication to our day. It was a great challenge for all and a great way to see some of our hockey players use their sweet skills. It was a tight match full of suspense, highs and lows, close calls and amazing goals. A well played match by all and to no surprise the score ended up being Canada 2 and Switzerland 1.
After broom ball, we traded our braun for brain power and played an intense game of human size “X’s and O’s”. This game brought challenging times to our younger Painted Turtles, but created some friendly competition and leadership opportunities for the older Snowy Owls to swoop in to assist our wee ones with another Canadian win ! Canada 5 – Switzerland 2.
Our next challenges consisted of Super duper slip and slide – having a run way of 60 feet into a slide of snow. After a couple trial runs and learning that jumping on our knees didn’t get us anywhere we got the hang of it. The longest distance was 6 feet. We also tested our physical ability with long jump and limbo.
Switzerland coming into the lead.
If you have never played Kubb (similar to Viking chess), you need to! It’s an awesome game based on pure luck – so don’t be a sore loser. Our students caught on quick and the game was full of cheers. We had a bunch of lucky students knocking over all the pegs and were left to knock over the King for the win!
Our last challenge of the day was bobsled. We used PVC pipe cut in half and small wooden balls. Our challenge was to work collectively as a team and start the ball high, and aim for the buckets. After a lot of brainstorming, many attempts and new strategies later, we nailed it! We are so proud of everyone working together!
Out of all the games we ended with a TIE!
Our closing ceremony was a great way to end our day with a few last words, and to congratulate our amazing team players. It was wonderful to see how we all worked together, communicated and challenged ourselves by stepping out of comforts zones. Many laughs were had, and memories made during our Winter Games. One of the many highlights of the day: Lara putting the fire out. She miss judged the strength of her arms and tossed water on the fire and half of it hit another student instead of the fire. Somebody’s been eating their veggies!
Congratulations to all the new beads earned Fire and Show and Tell, with an abundance of stickers, 4 layers, love, respect and a huge high five to Lucy for earning the first bravery sticker, for getting out of her comfort zone and participating in our morning smudging ceremony.
Also a big thank you to Kaysa for working on her survival kit and showing the class what she added: a knife, flashlight, duct tape, hand warmers, tin foil, and of course more chocolate.
Reminders** – Students can earn Bingo stickers for doing activities at home! Just share what you did! (Photo evidence doesn’t hurt).
Wow! What a wonderful day for our Olympics. Though we lacked the obvious winter appeal, we made up for it in high-energy games, creative play and an incredible spirit of the games! Upon arriving at Bygone Days, students were divided and asked to choose (or create) a country (Canada vs Nepal; Greece vs The Bernese Mountain Dogs) for the Winter Olympic Games. Our Olympians relayed the torch around the pond, lit the fire, swore an Olympian Oath with a focus on participation and having fun, belted out their cheers and set off for our Olympic Games. The first match was an epic sport that was new to many students… BROOM BALL! What a fun way to transfer familiar skills and technique to a new invasion game activity! This game was a highlight for many of our students, along with the shootout afterwards for the Tuesday crew and a student-inspired javelin toss for Wednesday’s.
Javelin Toss
Ice-broom-bowling
Broom Ball
After Broom Ball, the Olympians had the opportunity for another team challenge: BOBSLEDDING! Students were tasked with the challenge of working together to move marbles from one location to another, using their bobsled (a half-piece of PVC). This activity appears to be simple, however as we discovered, there are so many factors that contributed to a successful experience. It was an incredible tool to debrief group dynamics and to emphasize the importance of each member’s action on the team. It was powerful to hear the individual groups brainstorm solutions, communicate effectively and listen to their peers, repair mini-ruptures that happen during high-stress situations, and ultimately work together to transport as many marbles down their shoot as possible! What a great way to energize the group!
Working together on the “Bobsled”
Our next activity included more target practice for the Olympians. Students threw disc’s to hit various hoops, earning points depending on distance or angle. This activity helped with focus, allowed for team camaraderie and brought the competition of the games even closer together, for both days!
For our final challenge, Tuesday’s group chose to play an ultimate match of Kubb (essentially Viking Chess) to decipher the winning team. It was here that Canada was able to make a 2 point comeback on Nepal, ending Tuesday’s Winter Olympic Games in a TIE! Now, Wednesday’s group opted for an epic game of Capture the Flag, where, believe it or not, none of the flags could be found! This too ended Wednesday’s Winter Olympic Game in a TIE! (We swear we aren’t just giving out participation awards, haha!)
Kubb
It was a really fun day today. It was quite nice to see the difference between the groups. Tuesday’s students were really keen to imagine and create new structures with the PVC pipes and create giant slides as a group. Wednesday students were eager to build the fire, make their own tea and give offerings to the trees, or spend some quiet time working away at their spoons. A lot of new crafts came out of this week – some DIY axes, incredible home-made snowshoes, and spoons. Our Show and Tell experience was awesome! Thanks for working on these beads at home and sharing your experiences with us.
We had quite a few new bead recipients this week, including 6 Show and Tell Beads, 2 “Al’s” Bead for kindness, and even a Bingo Bead already! We also gave out a well-earned Teaching bead for some awesome yoga lessons to start and end our day. A big congratulations to our students for working so hard!
FYI: If you were curious if our amphibians survived their week-long hibernation… they did!
If you haven’t received our newly accommodated Winter Schedule, be sure to check out our website. Next week, we will be exploring The Science of Snow! Looking forward to seeing you!
