Hello folks one last time!

The last two days of forest school have come and our 2017 fall semester is now over.

With mixed feelings we looked back on our past months and said goodbye to new friends, adventures, exploration, discoveries and new (nature) knowledge! But no reason to be sad … Forest School will continue in the Winter in Collingwood and will return to Thornbury in the spring! And instead of being sad about the fact that the fall semester is over, we focused on the fact that it took place and cherish all the new memories that were created!

Mother nature has loaded us with tons of snow this December and we took plenty of time to get creative in the white fluff! Building shelters, playing games, discovering snowflakes … there’s really no limits in how to use snow!

Now that all the leaves have fallen off the trees we discovered a HUGE wasps nest. Before taking it down we researched and made sure that wasps don’t reuse their nest in the spring. We climbed up the tree to get a hold of the huge nest. It wasn’t that easy. We were all astonished of how well the nest was attached to a few branches. With enough force and impact, we successfully knocked the nest down and began opening it up. We found 6 layers of combs and also plenty of unhatched eggs. Ryder was really interested in this and took the time to try and carefully open up as many eggs as possible. There he discovered that the unhatched wasps where not all the same age. Some still a larva, some almost a full-grown adult. One thing all the unhatched eggs had in common: they were all located on the outside of the big comb layer. It seem that this is where the survival rate is the lowest. Ryder made the assumption that it most likely had something to do with the temperature.

In between enjoying the fresh snow, exploratory free play and saying good-bye to an awesome forest school season, we also found time to finish some unfinished projects like the bat-shelters and uncompleted worksheets.

Together we all cleaned up our forest-school classroom making sure everyone took their medallions with their hard earned beads and sticker sheets home.

And to end the last forest school day: a great big cinnamon role hug!!!!

I’d like to thank all the parents for bringing these fantastic nature nuts to the Thornbury Forest School. But most of all I’d like to thank each and every student for being so awesome and accomplishing so many great things this semester!

Thank you Aja, Ryder, Taven, Alice and Izzy for being you and contributing to the Forest School in your unique way! See you again soon!

Merry Christmas & a very happy to year!

Tamara

Hello once again!

Our Forest School fall semester is slowly coming to an end, sadly. But we will be back next year for sure. And maybe your children will be too!

On these last chilly Forest School days we have been wandering, hiking and exploring to keep ourselves warm. Last week’s theme was: nature photography. For this the students decided they wanted to visit the Clendennan Damn once more. We brought a camera with us and went on a Nature Photography Scavenger Hunt. On the list of pictures to take were many things like: something red, the inside of something, someone’s eye, somewhere down low, something cozy and many more. The children also added their own ideas: a fish, a bridge, a funny perspective … So as we arrived at the damn the hunt for the best photo was on! The Snowy Owls took turns with the camera hiking along the path, lurking behind the trees to try and find something unique to take a snapshot of. We made a lot of discoveries: animal tracks, close ups of tree barks & other plants, (dead) animals … At the end of our day we looked at all the awesome snapshots on a computer!

Here are some of the best snapshots that were taken by the students:

An other thing that has been going on in Heathcote is that the Snowy Owls have been building a fort on the property these last weeks. They like to begin their day with this and as every student arrives, they eagerly join in to continue the construction of the perfect forest school home. The idea is to winterize it a little. This children are waiting for the snow. Once the snow is here, they plan to insulate their fort with snow walls to make it warm and cozy inside. Building this fort has been a challenge in terms of gathering suitable materials, transporting them and setting them up. While building this fort there has also been a lot of ideas, problems, different opinions and teamwork. The making of this fort has brought up a lot of social challenges as well. Sometimes the students are in a ‘flow’ and all agree quickly on ideas and are able to make decisions easily, other days there was a lot of disagreement and the decision making led to discussions and even arguments. All of this is part of the process and it’s extremely helpful to have the time at Forest School to let this process develop and support the children in their social skills. When things became to difficult we held a “staff meeting” in the fort to gather our ideas and discuss our problems. We all became an advocate of our own ideas and the entire group project: fort. It was very amazing to experience the children’s will-power and engagement in the making of this shelter. The acceptance of everyone’s thoughts and feelings, the empathy for one anther, the excitement of creating a personalized shelter, looking out that no one is excluded … to name a few of the positive aspects that developed and grew during this project. Our fort is yet to be finished … stay tuned to see the outcome of it in the next two weeks!

Next week: winter celebration

See you then!

More pictures of our fun day 🙂

Good day!

Christmas is approaching and the weather is adjusting, at least it’s trying. A big mix of cold and warm weather. But there’s no such thing as the wrong weather! We here at Forest School are always prepared for an adventure and dressed accordingly!

Lately we have been starting our morning with fires (to keep us warm) and are expanding our fire-keeping knowledge as the children love to help make the fire, especially starting it. After some exploratory free-play the Snowy Owls discovered that there was still mint growing in the Heathcote gardens and wanted to make a tea. What a perfect idea to warm up! Lots of remaining leaves were picked, thrown into our large pot filled with water and over the fire it went. After not even 5 min the water already began to boil and the fresh mint tea was ready to be served just in time for our morning snack!

Afterwards some of the students wanted to earn some more stickers on their bingo-sheets. One of the fields left was ‘make up your own game’ so Aja came up with a mystical monster game where everyone had to invent their own mystical creature and make its movements during various different kinds of mini games. What was really fun about this game was that not only did the kids get very competitive, but after a few round everyone began adding in there own ideas making the game more diverse. We played for over an hour and time went by so fast!

Before lunch time we decided we wanted to leave the property for our nature photography session and the children asked if we could go to Slabtown in hopes that we might get lucky and still see fish trying to jump up the damn and then maybe even be able to take a picture of this! So we packed our lunches, got into the van and made our way. Unfortunatly we did not see any fish, but it’s always fun to watch the water and throw (huge!) sticks into the water to watch them slide down the damn. The water-level was still quite high.

After leaving Slabtown we went to an other damn: the Clendenan damn. Here we would surely be able to take some really good snapshots! Taven suggested going onto a little island and we started hiking into the forest. Once we arrived we saw a beaver home and even discovered beaver tracks and biting marks in trees! While hiking around we then found large piles of small fish in puddles without almost any water left in them anymore. At first we thought the fish were all dead, but after poking them we realized that a lot of them were still alive. The Forest School students went right to action and began saving one fish after an other. There were also a lot of bullfrog tadpoles. It was really great to see that after the fish had been put back into the pond that they began to swim right away. After our first fish-rescue we started talking about what could have led the fish and tadpoles to gather in puddles like this and what made it impossible for them to escape. We assumed that the water level of the pond had risen and suddenly sunken, creating smaller pools and puddles where the tadpoles and fish would remain, but leaving them cut off from the actual main body of water. This rescue and the children’s love and dedication to the animal’s lives was proof of real love for nature, which is why all 3 students have earned their nature-lover bead for this action. Congratulations!

We ventured on to see if we could find more ‘fish-puddles’ like this, and we did. No time for nature photography! Rescuing the fish was at the top of our priorities! While walking around we Aja then made an incredible discovery: she claimed she had found a snake! After taking a closer look it was clear that it wasn’t a snake. Maybe an eel? But does Ontario have actual eels? A quick google search revealed: yes! The pictures of eels and what we were holding in our hands did not exactly match though. So we forwarded a picture from our creature to some exports who then answered that we had found a lamprey! After some research we found out that Ontario has different kinds of lamprey. It’s fairly hard to distinguish between the kinds, but we hope very much that our find belongs to the native, non-invasive northern brook lamprey. Here some interesting facts about this species:

• unlike some other lamprey species, the Northern brook lamprey is non-parasitic and does not attach itself to larger host fish; the larvae are filter-feeders, consuming microscopic plant and animal life and decaying matter; adults have a non-functional intestine and do not feed
• multiple adults may spawn in the same nest, and multiple males may spawn with the same female; female Northern brook lamprey can lay over 1,000 eggs
• lamprey species are one of the most ancient freshwater fish families in the world
• lampreys are similar to sharks in that they do not have bones, but rather a cartilaginous skeleton

A very awesome and unique day here at Forest School once again!

Next week: animal tracking (& possible the opportunity to catch up on our nature photography!)

Good day parents!

Last Wednesday was our very first day of Forest School WITH snow. At least a little. I’m very sure we will be having more of that very soon. As it was very cold overnight a lot of the nearby puddles froze and that was what the Snowy Owls started their day off with: exploratory play with ice! First throwing things onto it, making it break. Then walking into the puddles making the ice crack underneath their boots. Next they discovered that larger parts floated away from the waves that were made and it became a challenge who could pick up the largest piece of ice. Then the students discovered that in nearby buckets, the water had completely frozen, but the water in the puddles had not completely frozen. We all made our assumptions as to why this is the case and came to the conclusion that this is most likely the case because the earth itself is warmer underneath the puddle than the surface under the bucket that was full of frozen water.

Our fingers began to feel very cold and we gathered around a fire to warm up. While we were preparing for our morning circle a bald eagle flew by! We all admired the bird of prey. Surprised by this wonderful visit we thought this was a very good start for our smudge. Everyone took some time in silence to cleanse themselves with the smoke of white sage, letting negative energy out and bringing good energy into their hearts to begin this brand new day at Forest School.

Our day would be all about maps! We brainstormed everything we knew about maps, why and when they were used as well and noted our thoughts in our journals. Things like fold-out-maps, navigation systems, GPS, smartphones, compasses, map legends, unknown areas, hiking and so on came up.  I also asked the children to remember a situation when they and their family used a map. The most common answer here was with their smartphones to navigate their way to a destination. Nowadays our maps are very modern and with help of GPS and internet, we don’t have to do much thinking of our own anymore. I asked the students if they knew how people found their ways a long time ago when computers, smartphones and the internet didn’t exist. They came up with answers like: with compasses, stars and help of the angle of the sun. We also thought about how nature, especially animals, navigate through the world to find their destinations.

After more exploratory play and a lunch to get us through the cold Forest School afternoon it was time to try and make our own maps. The location for this purpose would be the Heathcote Park. We took our journals and some markers with us and as soon as we arrived started drawing all the unique landmarks, trails and other rememberable things that would help us navigate through the park. On our way we discovered a cool new fort someone had set up between the dense cedars, probably fishermen who prepare their fish before going back home. This had to be marked on our map too of course 🙂 !

After heading back to the Forest School we joint our drawings to make one large map all together. And what a success it was! We will be heading back to the Heathcote more often during the rest of the semester and will continue adding new things to our map as we discover them!

Next week: nature photography

See you then, Tamara

Hey folks!

Last Wednesday was our big project day. The week before we had already started speaking about what the Snowy Owls wished to do on the big project day so I had enough time to get materials. The children are currently very eager to earn their stickers and beads. Therefore, after they had taken a glance at the missing stickers on their bingo sheets they made a quick decision: help an animal out. Last year they claimed they had already made bird houses. So we wanted to try and help a different kind of animal out. But which one … ? Bats! Bats need homes too and are quite helpful as they can eat up to 1000 mosquitoes in one single night. Enough said here! We began researching how bat-shelters are made and it turned out to be fairly easy. So on the project day I brought a good building plan we could follow while making our very own bat-homes.

Found on pinterest

Before we got started we needed to think of all the tools and materials we needed to make these homes:

• hammer
• saw
• wood boards
• nails
• measuring tape
• pencil
• mesh
• work bench

Now that we gathered everything needed, we were able to begin! To start off, we needed to prepare and cut all the necessary wood pieces to make the shelter. We needed a back piece, roof, 2 front pieces, 2 side pieces and a piece for a predator guard. We started measuring on the big wood boards, trying to be as precise as possible. After everything was measured it was time to put the saw to use. But before we went over some safety rules to ensure our project day would go without injuries. I received a lot of help from the students while working the electric saw: they held the boards in place and exchanged the boards when needed. It took all morning to finish this first big step of getting all the correct wood parts together for the bat-shelters.

After lunch and a good session of exploratory play we were ready to continue. This time putting a different tool to use: hammer. Again we went over some safety rules. Taven, experienced working with tools and wood, also gave us a lot of useful tips on how to use a hammer and nails.

We took out our plan on how to build the shelter and started assembling the pieces. The students discovered that it was easier to work with an assistant, so they teamed up and helped each other out. A lot of nails were slammed into wood and slowly, but surely our projects began to take shape and look like actual bat shelters! We were busy all afternoon. Time flew by and we didn’t even realize how fast pick-up time was approaching. As the first parents arrived, we were still busy finishing our homes. The bat shelters looked AMAZING!

What a successful day at Forest School, getting creative making projects to help animals out 🙂

Next week: hiking

See you then! Tamara

What a typical breezy fall day here at forest school! There was a little bit of everything: rain, clouds, sunshine, wind … and some fresh fall temperatures! We were well prepared for an other Wednesday in Heathcote with our warm sweaters and rain jackets. And to help keep us warm we wanted to start our day with a fire.  We have been practicing our fire making, fire keeping and fire safety a lot lately. And today was the big test: could the children make their fire on their own and earn their fire bead?! (spoiler alert: YES!) But before we began, we brainstormed all our previous experiences and known rules regarding a fire. We came up with 5 solid rules and designed small mini-posters to help us remember. Our rules:

1. Always have a bucket of water with you around a fire.
2. Don’t play with fire.
3. What is in the fire, stays in the fire.
4. Be careful around the fire:
   1. Watch out for the smoke
   2. Make your fire far away from any trees, building etc.
   3. While blowing into the fire pit to provide the flame with oxygen, make sure to not blow onto someone sitting on the other side
5. Don’t get too close to the flames

The children then had 5 min to discuss what they needed to not only start their fire, but also maintain it long enough to be able to cook a meal. Lots of thoughts and ideas were shared and once the time was up, everyone was so ambitious to start a fire! Everyone grabbed as many dry small sticks as could be found (which wasn’t easy on this wet fall day) for the kindling, birch bark was used as tinder, and dry, larger sticks were also collected to make sure the flame had enough to feed on after the tinder had burnt out (fuel). I was very pleased to see that the children had payed close attention to our last fire making sessions: first they used the smaller sticks to create a little grid which will provide the flame with oxygen from below and then serve as kindling. After this the tinder was placed on top of this grid. Around the grid and tinder the children used the larger sticks to create a square log cabin around the kindling and tinder. This is the perfect setup for a fire. The tinder was set on fire and the flames grew quickly. Within 5 min we already had a good fire going! Now to make sure the fire lasted long enough for our planned meal, we all grabbed larger logs from the wood cabin and started laying the large logs on top of the flame. It was time to have a seat and simply enjoy the natural warmth of a fire. The Snowy Owl then asked if they had now earned their fire-bead. Before handing them their bead there was one last test: the rules! Every child repeated the 5 rules we came up with on their own – successfully! And with that they really earned their bead!

After some quick passing showers and a snack, we began to prepare our meal: tomato-vegetable soup! For this the children would also earn a bead, the cooking bead! We gathered all our vegetables: carrots, celery, potatoes, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, green onions, beans and garlic and began to chop everything up. I was amazed by the children’s enthusiasm and teamwork! Right off the bat Ryder asked if we could repeat a cooking session like this and I’m very sure that on an upcoming cold fall or winter morning … this will be a great idea! All the vegetables were dumped into a large pot and 3 big spoons of dehydrated tomato soup were added. We poured several cups of water into the pot and began stirring to dissolve the larger clumps of powder. Already we smelt the yummy taste of the tomato soup and everyone gave a “mmmmmmmhhhhhhh!” from themselves 🙂 We put the pot onto our fire and it started boiling quickly. Now to kill some time … with hide-and-go-seek-tag! Not only did time fly, but the running also kept us very warm. And as soon as we knew it, it was already lunch time! We all tried our home-made soup and was it ever D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S!!!

After lunch everyone helped out cleaning the dishes. The kids were very proud of their success and were very happy to help out. Participating and understanding the importance of not only their own role, but recognizing that every single person is of importance in this group project is what really stuck with the kids. Everyone was really up-beat and cleaning up was done in to time!

The afternoon was spent in the Heathcote park playing endless rounds of camouflage. A lot of “meteorites” and “lava-rocks” were also found, apparently they are worth millions of dollars!!! Our new (old) dog-friend Sadie joined us to the park as well.

The day went by so quickly! Before it was pick-up time we did our debrief of the day and a bead ceremony – there were so many to be handed out 🙂

What a wonderful day once again here at the Heathcote Forest School!!

Next week: nature photography (& Halloween celebration! Come in a costume if you like 🙂 )

Hello once again!

What wonderful fall weather we had this week! This gave us so much time to play and explore outside. This week’s theme was “archery” and oh boy (girl?!) did we have fun!

Before making our own bows and arrows we learned some different parts of a real bow and arrow and discussed where and why bows and arrows are used. We came to the conclusion that nowadays bows and arrows are used for hunting, but also in archery competitions. A long time ago bows and arrows were also used in wars as weapons. Over the many hundred years of archery, humans have developed astonishing way to create the best bows and arrows! Our versions that we were about to create would certainly be much more primitive, but it helped to know a little about the making and history of archery. We spoke about the tools and materials we would need to make bows and arrows: string, knife, feathers and wood. But not just any wood! The Snowy Owls were very eager to get started and were on a mission to find the perfect piece of wood for their bows: not too old and with a natural bend. At the end of the property by the riverbeds of the Beaver River are a lot of washed up logs and branches. The perfect place to go on a hunt for the piece of wood. A lot of larger pieces of wood were found and also lots of perfectly straight branches for some arrows. As the children brought their findings back to the table some of them noticed that as they began working the wood, the sticks snapped or cracked because they were too old. Back to the river banks to go find the right piece of wood! This time each of them came back with several pieces of wood, which was a very smart move as more of the wood determined itself to be unsuitable for archery uses. Time flew by while sharpening the point of straight branches to make arrows and taking off barks to make the bows more smooth. We actually even forgot our morning snack! Ha-ha! Slowly but surely everyone had created a bow and several arrows, so we could interrupt our making and have a quick snack. But now that everything was made, it had to be tested! While the children were still chewing their food, they quickly drew their own personalized a bulls-eye. After setting up the targets and going over some safety rules … Now … NOW it was time to try the hand-made bows & arrows out! And it was AWESOME! Some of the bows needed improvement, but luckily Taven brought his real bow from home and let everyone have turns with it. In the beginning it was more difficult for the kids to shoot the arrows, but with more practice some of the students actually began hitting their targets! The excitement was huge and they children became very competitive, keen to get a bulls-eye! After a while only Taven was still shooting, determined to finally get his bulls-eye. His hard work payed off: after about 30 min of aiming and shooting … he finally shot right into the middle of his red bulls-eye! Good job!

After our archery excursion we had a late lunch and decided to take advantage of the awesome weather to do more exploratory play. Between looking for frogs (they’re all gone 🙁 ), playing tag, climbing trees, foraging for leftovers in the gardens … time went by so fast once more. Before we knew it, the first parent had already arrived!

We had a blast and made the most out of this lovely fall weather!

Next week we will be focusing on fire making. We’ve had a looot of practice, I’m sure some students will be earning their fire beads! 🙂 We also want to cook a meal on our fire, so if you have a veggie or two to spare, make sure to bring it to Forest School next Wednesday!

Thank you! Tamara

Hey folks!

Today we explored the Beaver River! We were lucky to have such nice warm weather in this early month of October. After our morning ritual of check-ins and smudging, we began making a minnow-trap together. We used a big pop bottle, took the lid off, cut off the top part, then turned it into the bottle and made holes into the side of the top of the bottle to sew it together. That way the minnows would swim into the bottle, but not be able to swim out. We added some more holes to the bottle so that more water could flow through the trap. After finishing the trap, everyone “donated” something from their snack as bate. We attached the trap to a rope and put the minnow trap into the river. Now it was time to wait.

In the meantime we explored the river shoreline and discovered more mussle shells. The insides of the clam shells are very like by the kids. After rinsing the mud off the shells and holding the inside of the shell in the light the Thornbury students are in awe over and over again: the colors that shimmer are quite amazing! From a shimmering pink to a shimmering turquoise green, while admiring the beautiful, silky insides of the mussels we were reminded of jewelry. The kids were very eager to find more shells and compare them! And while in one spot we were finding a lot of shells, other spots had no mussels at all. We wondered why this was the case and soon found animal prints that would give us the answer to our question: raccoons! They must eat all the actual mussel and leave the shells in the area they had their food.

What would a day of river exploration be without paddling the river?! Luckily the weather was on our side and we made our way to Slabtown in kayaks to hopefully also see the migration of the salmon and watch the big fish jump up the damn. While paddling down the river there were plenty of rapids. The kids counted 15 spots in total where we had some fun, swiftly parts to paddle along. One section in particular was their favorite: the riverbed naturally dropped about a foot in one spot and made a ‘mini-waterfall’ that everyone had fun paddling down. While on the river we spoke about different animals living on, by and in the river. We discovered that many animals and also many plants depend on the river which provides them with food, water and an excellent environment to grow and live in. We noticed that many backyards of local residents backed onto the river shores as well. Apparently, humans also love being by the water 🙂 ! Once we reached Slabtown, we did not see any fish try and jump the damn. But the warm weather and the water rushing down the damn was definitely very inviting to go for a swim. Maybe the last swim of the year? No second thoughts ! The children were on the damn and jumped into the water. After experiencing the current of the water flowing down the damn, we could not believe that fish actually were able to swim and jump up it!

Back in Heathcote it was definitely time for a lunch. And also, what was that minnow trap of ours doing? It was full of fish! Many of them had died unfortunately. Upset about this experience, we talked about why this may have happened. Some suggestions were that it was too crowded, the bate we had put into the trap wasn’t good for the fish, we waited too long or there might have not been enough oxygen for all the fish to breath in the bottle. We were reminded of how delicate nature actually is and how destroying our impact can be.  Our trap needed improvement and needed to be checked more regularly if we wanted to try it again, that was for sure!

After encountering some of the Beaver River’s inhabitants we thought about more animals which can be found here and where their habitat actually is. We divided the environment ‘river’ into 3 sections:

1. Tree-tops / above the river
2. River banks / river surface
3. underwater

We made a map and glued pictures of many animals that can be found at the beaver river onto their prime living space. We also talked about what the animals eat and why the (Beaver) river inhabitants benefit so much from living there.

In the afternoon it began to rain more and we wanted to get cozy around a fire to warm ourselves up. The children are always very excited to make a fire and are getting more and more chances to start a fire on their own.  On a rainy day like today, that’s not necessarily the easiest thing to do! The responsibility lies with them to find the right tinder to get the fire going,afterwards find the right wood to keep the fire going and make sure that all the rules we made about being around a fire are being followed. It’s also the children’s responsibility to make sure that the fire is out after we are done. Giving the children these opportunities to supervise and maintain our fire on their own really empowers them and gives them a sense of independence. The kids show me on a continuous basis that they can follow the rules, understand the dangers of fire and undertake all the necessary steps to prevent a dangerous situation. I’m sure some fire beads will be added to their medallions pretty soon … 😉

Speaking of beads: congratulation to Izzy & Ryder on gaining your first beads – the story telling bead! We enjoyed your stories by the fire today!

Fall weather is here and the colder weather will be rolling in very soon! We will continue making fires to keep us warm! Hopefully next week, too!

Next week: Plant ID

Tamara