Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Snowmageddon

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Hi Folks,

I think we were all super surprised this morning when we saw so much of that white stuff! We can’t believe we almost forgot how beautiful it is. Our students had a beautiful moment at the start of our day – venturing into the woods, we all found a quiet, personal space where we caught cotton ball size snow flakes with our tongue. It was so quite with no wind or birds to listen to we were in awe of the silence. We observed so much, and we are so proud of our students and their amazing owl eyes.

It was amazing to see all our builders at work this morning ranging from epic igloos, snow city with walls, towers and a full volcano in the middle, snowmen and a race car track fully equipped with a pit stop and stands. Our students even had the chance to play a Forest School favourite game – Fox and Bunny. A game of endurance, chance and pure luck, along with a new twist from a student – the Elder Bunny. The magical bunny that can bring a bunny road block back to life! It was a huge hit, so you should ask your child about it.

We continue to track, explore, share, reflect and build relationships with each other, ourselves and our environment. Thanks for a great snowy day!

Krista and Travis

Love for all weather!

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Hi Friends,

What an incredibly creative day we had! We were very curious students today and started looking at different types of creature and plants such as :

Red Spotted Purple (Butterfly)
Emerald Ash Borer
Wooly Bear American Dagger
Northern Oriole

We also love rain days because it gives our students the opportunity to dive into their imagination and creative side. We were big builders and inventors – from the tallest tower, pumpkin stoves, painting pictures and 3D replicas.

From carving pumpkins to eating toasted seeds, we even continue to get to know our forest. Finding new mushrooms, Downy Woodpeckers, Salamanders and new plants. We started to focus on the Green trees today, and used our owl eyes to find Spruce, Pine, Hemlock and Cedar. Some were easier finds than others, and we are still on the hunt for the Pine tree!

Until next week

Krista and Travis

Acorns and more…

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Hey Folks,

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.

Krista and Travis

Natures Colour Wheel

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Hi 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!

Thank you for another great week!

Krista and Travis

Community Building

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Hi Folks,

Each week we challenge our students to discover something new that is within our woodland, and this week was no different. While some of our students used their wonderful imagination this morning – playing Wolf pack – which consisted of territories, predators, cubs, stalking and of course nap time, our other students really dived into their creative side and created a Forest School Wooly Bear Sanctuary, which consisted of 17 wooly bears, and banded tussock moth and a Brown Hooded Owlet. Now we do not normally like to take creatures out of their natural habitat, but we like to let everyone know that all caterpillars were returned back to their natural habitat unharmed.

While our chickadees took on the role of a chipmunk or squirrel, we started collecting different types of food (acorns, leaves and chestnuts). We then built a very special “cupboards” made from natural objects in different spots around our outdoor classroom, our goal is to check back next week to see if the food we left will still be there! Our afternoon looked a bit different for our older forest schoolers – building forts, exploring the woods and continuing to build relationships with each other. We love giving our students the time to reflect back on the day, and with another great day all round we feel very grateful for all our students who come and let us spend the day with them!

We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Krista and Travis

Field Trip!

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Hi Friends,

As most of you know we went off property this morning and headed to one of Forest Schools favourite area – Metcalfe Rock! Located just beyond Blue Mountain we tucked ourselves away right beside natural rock formations and some of Ontario’s best rock climbing.

Our students challenged themselves through rock climbing and caving, along with meeting our sister school from Collingwood. Our older students discovered how courageous they were caving in the Ice Cave, while our smaller students explored caverns and smaller caves. We are so proud of everyone who pushed their comfort zones, made new friends and new memories. We took an extra pictures this week to capture everyones experiences, we hope you enjoy!

See you all next week,

Krista and Travis

You can find us in the forest!

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Hi Folks,

Thanks for stopping by to read about another great day at Forest School, and we had such a mix of weather from heat, sun, rain, thunderstorm, lighting, chilly wind, hail and then back to sun, our students are getting used to what Fall is all about.

This morning our students warmed up by our new fire pit (Thanks Jennie), and with some familiar games that kept us working up a sweat, we also introduced a new skillful game called scout. This was child invented, and quickly became a favourite of ours that we plan on continuing to play and work towards becoming skillful scouters, hiders and planners.

Today was also the start of our natural first aid kits, and we are lucky enough to have a HUGE patch of Spotted touch-me-nots or Spotted Jewelweed right by our building. Our students harvested some and put the stems in a jar and covered it with oil. Within 4-6 weeks we can then strain the contents and make a salve – this will become a remedy for Poison Ivy. We continued to wonder through the forest and found more gems like our friendly neigbourhood Garter Snake, which welcomed more questions and firsts for some, journals, sit spots, lots of construction with forts and plant identification – with our new I.D cards (Thanks Matt).

A big Thank you to all the students who helped out with making our Pear Sauce, and while having too much fun we ran out of time to cook it, but we are happy to report all pears were still eaten raw, coated in cinnamon, ginger and vanilla – YUM.

Reminders – We are going a Field Trip to Metcalf Rock, and we couldn’t be more exited to show all of our students a new space and a place where they take their families!

Until next week,

Travis and Krista

Music is everywhere!

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Hi Folks,

Thanks for stopping by for another great day at Forest and Nature School, and with all this beautiful weather we didn’t waste any time. We welcomed all of students with the sound of ukuleles, which led to lots of singing and our students even playing their own tunes this morning. We are always encouraging our students to express themselves through song, dance, art or story telling, and we welcome more instruments every week!

Our students were in full swing this morning playing child led games, working on our hunting and hiding skills, which make our students amazing trackers and are even starting to build relationships that embody respect, communication and genuine empathy. We have so much to learn from each other and this is why we encourage our older students to spend time with our younger students, which naturally happens and the learning is abundant!

Today we challenged our younger students and continue to wander and explore our new Forest School home, and while all of our students work on core routines, each students day unfolds differently. Some students focused on the little things like catching new creatures (tree frogs, millipedes, caterpillars, cicadas, and one legged grasshoppers!). Plants were a big topic today from ground mushrooms to acorns falling from the sky, along with which animals we can catch (chipmunks and squirrels). Some of our other students worked on construction projects, identification, journals, art work, ultimate hiking, tracking and we even started collecting Cicada exoskeletons!

We continue to build our school map which lead us to all of our amazing finds and continue to make the Blueberry trails our own personal magic forest. We look forward to seeing everyone next week to make some more music!

Travis and Krista

Millipedes, Caterpillars and More!

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Hey Folks!

We are filled with gratitude for the wonderful welcome into the Wasaga Beach community from our new friends and families. Our day was filled with little moments that took us by surprise (literal surprise!.. aka spotted touch me not flowers), and big moments that brought us all together to build relationships.

We are very proud to say that all of our students have amazing Owl eyes (excellent vision) and identified plants and creatures that our teachers even missed. Our students were so eager to share their findings with their fellow peers and were constantly asking “I wonder” questions, which as educators we love as we want to keep those inquisitive minds pondering. We worked on mapping, tracking and our karate moves when we walked through unknown spider webs.

A lot of our students were new to this forested area, which made for lots of hiking and exploration. We were really looking to the ground for what Mother Nature had to offer and we were not disappointed. Some of the finding our student made were: Monarch Butterflies, Yellow Bears (Caterpillars), Huge Dragonflies, Inch worms, Tree Frogs, Fire Ants, Mushrooms, Ferns, Trees, oh and did we mention Millipedes? These friendly little fellas were abundant today showing us their legs, body and how they protect themselves. Our students were even lucky enough to have some firsts and felt what it was like to hold one. As one student said “it feels very ticklish and feels super cool”.

We want to thank you to all the students for coming into the Forest with us and exploring, wandering, playing and sharing their stories, we are very lucky to have spent our day with such awesome students.

Come back each week to see what we have been up to!

Travis, Krista and the FNS Crew.

Welcome to Wasaga!

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Hey Folks!

We are thrilled to be opening up our new school in Wasaga Beach at the Nordic Centre on Blueberry Trail Rd! This beautiful area is the perfect backdrop for our FNS program with tons of trails to explore and all the mysteries of the forest waiting to be discovered.

Last week, we had an Open house that drew a great crowd of folks to come a check out the space. Thanks to all the new students and families that had the chance to meet their teachers and explore the trails and the “wax hut” – our new classroom complete with wood stove! Speaking of teachers, in Wasaga this year we’ve got two excellent mentors: they are Krista, a long time FNS instructor in Collingwood, and Travis, who is brand new to our program but no stranger to the outdoors. Get to know them by checking out their bio’s here.

Check back here weekly to see what the students have been up to on their journey!

Thanks,

Matt (on behalf of the FNS Crew)

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