Free Spirit Forest and Nature School

Nurturing Connection with Self, Others and Nature

Whirlpools and Waddling, Paddling and Pedaling

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Hey Folks!

We had an awesome last few weeks of Forest School full of excitement and adventure! Here are some the highlights below, and scroll all the way down to check out the pics. Thanks for the amazing year and see you in September!

Mountain Biking

We’ve got a ton of newly built trails at Forest School for Mountian Biking, so took advantage of this with a couple of our classes. Students wound their way through the meadows, hills and forest as they explored some of our favourite places (mysterious forest, maple forest) in a new way. We also left the property to try out some local trails together, while geocacheing along the way! Our kids were pretty tuckered out afterwards, but as we found out at our end of the year debrief, this was for some their favourite memory!

Ducks

Huey, Duey, Luey and Darkwing – 4 baby ducks that paid our Chickadees a visit a few weeks ago! Students eagerly fed and took care of these wonderful little creatures who have found a second home at Forest School. They built an elaborate play pen for them using all sorts of our “loose parts”. When it was time to go, it was hard to say goodbye!

Geocacheing

Did you know that the Collingwood Library lends on GPS units with dozens of geocache locations uploaded? It’s the ultimate scavenger hunt and our students rocked it uncovering 6 separate caches over the course of the days we did it. Ask your kid about it and plan your next adventure – there’s so much to discover!

Paddling

While the location and type of boats we were paddling varied, one thing for sure was the same across the board – beautiful paddling weather (with a narrow escape one day!). Our Friday group canoed along the Beaver River, for a peaceful quiet paddle with the river all to ourselves. We enjoyed a shore lunch (and a special homemade treat from one of students – thanks!) and some swimming in the rapids.

Our other groups set their sites on the Nottawasaga. Some groups took canoes, others took kayaks and some were even able to paddle all the way from the Sports Complex to Schooner Town. We saw deer, otters, beavers, countless birds and more. One thing we can guarantee is that a highlight for most was lunchtime – swimming and climbing at the sand dunes!

Our Chickadees braved the water, too, on the big pond at Bygone Days! They paddled all over and spotted lots of turtles out in the sun, and even caught some frogs!

Fishing

Our big pond is alive with creatures at this time of year and if you are familiar with our program, you know that we’ve caught quite a few! From nymphs to turtles and everything in between, our students love to hunt! We traded in our nets (or rather in addition to them) and grabbed our fishing poles and paddled our final week. Our students learned to tie knots, bait hooks and how to operate different styles of fishing reels, all while balancing in the water. The result was impressive – literally over 100 Rock Bass in a day. And to top of it multiple perch, a first for the big pond! A huge success for our students. Throw in some stand-up paddle boarding and swimming and call it a good day (week!).

Whirlpool and Pier Jump

To end of the entire season, our Friday visited the whirlpool (behind Matthew Way) for some swimming and exploring in the Pretty River. It’s a beautiful, naturally carved out hole in the river that you can “slide” down into on a natural rock slide. Afterwards we headed to the Collingwood harbour where brave students leapt into the frigid bay – a great kick-off to summer!

We want to thanks all the parents, students and our entire FNS community for the awesome year of adventure, play, learning and so much more this year. It was truly awesome!

See you in the Fall!

Matt, Krista and Kim (and the rest of the FNS team)

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Imaginations running wild and splashing through the day.

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With the wild and mild temperature, our Forest School turned into what seemed like one big giant puddle! Students took full advantage of this and had a blast splashing in it, breaking ice, and getting stuck in mud (you may have noticed their clothes…).

After reading “The Giving Tree” and finding our woolly bear caterpillar emerged for the warm day, we ventured out on a huge hike to Maple Forest for a sweet surprise. After tasting some fresh maple sap, we were especially thankful to join Al at the sugar shack and get to experience (and help!) with the evaporation process of the sap! This was a first for a lot of our students today and we dove in with so much excitement! We learned how to identify good maple trees to tap by looking at their leaves and additionally, we learned the subtle, but important, difference between rabbit and deer scat!

A lot happened while at Maple Forest and we noticed our usually trickling creek became a flowing river. So naturally it was time to race sticks and make a beaver dam. We even pretended it was all sap and we had encountered the mother load!

In the afternoon, we spent some time building shelters, making fires in “The Fort” and letting our imaginations run free!

Thanks for sending your child prepared for the wet and slushy day today! Because of their preparedness, we were able to run, explore, learn and play all day today!

And a big Welcome to Aislinn, our new Forest School Teacher!

Cheers,

The Forest School Team

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Disc Golf and Salamanders

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Hey Everyone,

Field Trip! And what a fun one we had.

Have you ever played golf? Or thrown a Frisbee? Well, we combined the two target games for a day of Disc Golf at Duntroon Highlands Nordic Centre. They have a newly developed disc golf course on their fabulous 100 acre site. For more information and your chance to play on your own, check out the Disc Course Association here.

At Highlands Nordic, our hike out to the course took us in all sorts of different directions each day– rolling down hills, climbing through tunnels, searching for what seemed like an unlimited amount of golf balls, sneaking up on cats and squirrels, crunching our way through fallen leaves in the forest, and even patiently catching frogs in puddles!

Did someone say salamanders?? On our unhurried hike, it didn’t take us long to (respectfully!) uncover hundreds of Eastern Red Backed salamanders. They ranged in sizes and speed – we even found some teeny-weenie baby ones! On two of our days, we were lucky enough to spot a yellow Spotted Salamander as well! Our younger students (and some older students too – water creatures are such a draw for our learners!) dove into a pond study as well, where we uncovered lots of crayfish, water striders and mayfly larvae.

When we arrived at the disc course we learned some basic skills, general guidelines and play etiquette, and then had a blast taking aim at our baskets. Students progressed quite quickly in these skills and were great supporters and mentors for one another! It was a lot of fun to try something new together.

As they do, most of our days varied quite a bit. The Highlands Nordic centre is a magical place, and there is just so much to do. Some groups went on determined golf ball hunts in the forest, while others played extra disc golf; others collected eggs from the hens and visited the turkeys and pig, while others got a first-hand lesson on turtles; and some students built shelters and played forest games like camouflage or sardines. On Friday, we even stopped on the way back along the Bruce Trail for a hike to check out Frank’s Lime Kiln off of County Rd 91 and shared a handful of storytelling sessions from our students.

After returning the school from our field trip, all sorts of fun happened during some unstructured time. On Tuesday we headed out to our sit spots for some building time. On Wednesday we had an epic marble/pipe construction with loose parts and a wild Ring Toss tournament in the rain… until the lightning came, directing us to a safer location where we began a long-term story and design activity. On Thursday we did teambuilding activities and games, and then headed off to an area on-site dubbed “The Fort,” named for its impeccable fortress! It is surrounded by burrs, poison ivy and stinging nettle… with only a couple safe paths in for the knowledgeable and brave! And Friday we enjoyed some slack-lining after our adventurous hike.

Congrats to the students whose estimations were the closest in our Golf Ball Jar and won a prize! This week we had many students work hard to earn their story-telling bead!

Next Week:
We learn all about Plants! We hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Cheers,

Kim, Tamara and Matt

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Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Kayak or Canoe…..

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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!

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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

“Water” you waiting for?

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Hi Everyone,

Our kids catching fish

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” – Chinese proverb

We enjoyed another awesome day at Forest School, and with the highly anticipated fishing day, our students were all super excited to get their day started! Throughout our morning we taught each other about frogs, turtles, fish and fun/interesting facts about water. One of our favourite parts of the day was creating worm bubbles, which left us with more happy memories to remember for a lifetime. Staying on the topic of worms, our students quickly realized they needed worms to fish! Finding the perfect spot to dig for worms was super easy, and though not all students wanted to touch them, we all worked as a team to collect what we needed.

After lunch we relaxed by the Beaver River all afternoon, while most of our students didn’t have a fishing pole, this gave us the opportunity to create our own. Searching for that perfect stick, rolling up the fishing line and attaching the hook, are some skills we hope stick with our kids. After going over safety rules we spent the rest of the day working towards 3 goals. Our first goal was to hook 2 worms onto our hook (thank you to everyone who helped each other out on this one!) Our second goal was to work on our pond study. Each student had to find 2 creatures, and identify them from our books. We have some great detectives in class, we found Water striders, Dragonfly nymphs, Minnows, Tadpoles, Crayfish, Whirling beetles and a huge leech! Our third goal was to catch and release 2 frogs each. We love a good frog hunt – I mean, who doesn’t!?

Thanks to those for bringing in their show and share gems, we love to see these items and learn something new each week! Our kids earned an abundance of stickers along with 1 Leadership bead, 1 Bingo bead, 6 Peer support beads, 1 Al bead and 2 Bravery beads.

Reminder – Our registration is now open for the start of September 2017. With more days available and new age groups!

Next week – We are going to be planting food, and looking into wild edibles!

Until next week,

Krista

Go(by!) fish!

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Wow. There sure have been some incredible changes around the land at Bygone Days. Students have really taken to ensuring that all of our nature-tasks, like filling bird feeders and watering plants, are looked after upon arrival. This noteworthy interest and initiative certainly compliments their ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship and helps build that awesome connection with the land! And lately, they are keen to jump into all of the treats that Mother Earth gives us in the spring…especially by the pond! Throughout the week, we saw tadpoles, frogs, water bugs, leeches and, our personal favourite: the courageous painted turtles sunbathing on logs (and even venturing out to share in some sit spots!) Students love this up-close experience with nature and seem to have developed a deep connection – it is a beauty to see it unfold!

We traveled off-site for another field trip this week – the ever so desired fishing day! What a beautiful day to spend by the bay! We learned a lot about different casting and jigging techniques, re-familiarized ourselves with fishing knots, explored with all sorts of lures, witnessed some creative minnow traps, hooked our own worms… and became especially close with the high-density goby, an invasive bottom feeding fish. We had some first-time catches, teasing nibbles, and a lot of patience for the great bambino! On Thursday, we headed back a little early to try our luck on the big pond at the school – no catches but a few nibbles!

Students really enjoyed trying their hands at fishing this week and after our awesome learning experience, all students earned their fisher-person bead! A special shout out to a rod-rescue mission by a Snowy Owl on Wednesday and an epic “catch of the day” by Matt (it was a fly away t-shirt!).

Additional beads earned:
1 Sit Spot Bead
4 Reflection Beads
2 Nature Lover Beads
2 Bravery beads

Three Housekeeping Items:
– With the incredibly warm weather upon us, we would like to remind parents to help students pack and remember their water bottles and hats.
– We have some sun screen and bug spray, but if you have a particular favourite, please bring it!
– As tempting as it might be to wear flip flops, please ensure that your child also has proper running shoes (rain boots for ponds, if you’d like!) for all of our busy day adventures (it’s poison ivy and tick season and we want to be extra careful). Closed-toed paddling sandals with heel straps are a great all around shoe.
-As the days get hotter, please send your kids along with a swimsuit as we may have opportunities to jump in the water.

Lastly, an additional reminder to register soon for next year, if you are interested, as it is beginning to fill up.

Thanks again! See you next week, as we take a closer look at bees!

Happy Trails,

Matt, Kim and Krista

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Bee-ware of the Bee’s

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Hi Friends,

Our students becoming Bee’s

We had an amazing dose of vitamin D while enjoying the summer weather today, and all the heat and humidity didn’t slow our kids down one bit! This week we touched on the topic of bee’s, while still enjoying our regular routines. We started our day with a student led game “Bee-ing Human” similar to tag, but this got us working up such sweat that we had to cool down with blowing bubbles! And who doesn’t love bubbles! While sitting in on our check in’s, the question “If you had a superpower that could help change the world, what would it be?” This got our kids thinking all about bad guys, controlling the weather and the ability to help end world hunger with ‘Mother Nature’ capabilities.

While our Painted Turtles were working on their sit spots, some of them decided to get their hands dirty and make mud pies and cakes. They even took the time to decorate them with dandelion’s, but for some reason, no one seemed too interested in tasting it.

Our morning discussions brought us to our first lesson about bee’s. We buzzed over to our journals and started writing and drawing all the information we knew, and our students know a lot! We even looked at the ‘Honey Bee’ anatomy. Last Spring, we were lucky enough to find an abandoned bee’s nest, and had the chance to dry it out and were able to feel the outside (which feels like really thin paper) and the honey comb inside. Getting up close to the nest really put things into perspective for our students. After our lesson it naturally led into our bee themed game! Called “Get to the Honey” this game included 2 Bee guards, 2 Bee forgers, 1 Queen Bee, and 2 Bears! The goal was for the bears to find the hive and get all that honey, but wait! You don’t want to get caught by the guards (their stingers really hurt). While the guards are protecting their home, the forgers are buzzing around trying to find nectar and pollen. Phew! Our students quickly discovered there is never any down time for a bee whether it’s, foraging, protecting, feeding the larva, or building upon the hive. The truly discovered the meaning behind the phrase “you’re a busy bee”.

With a high of 32 degrees our afternoon was fairly relaxed. Between frog hunting (6 in total and a bullfrog which got away!), making lip chap (which was super easy and only consisted of bee’s wax, coconut oil and peppermint oil) we enjoyed finishing off our day with a well deserved river dunk.

Thank you to Emily and Taven for your Show and Share, as well to all of our students who showed respect and love for one another! Our day was full of recognition! 4 littler less lunch beads, 1 bravery bead, 1 storytelling bead, 2 fire beads and 1 bingo bead! We are even getting super close to winning some prizes for our stickers! Keep being awesome Painted Turtles and Snowy Owls!

Next Week – Water!

Thanks for a great day everyone, until next week

Krista

What do Turkey Nests, Sun Fires, Snapping Turtles and Leeks have in common?…

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…Forest School!!

Hey Everyone,

This week the classes learned all about Ecosystems. After our core routines, we started off by coming up with a working definition of what Ecosystems are and how they connect all over the world. It was awesome to lean on the prior-knowledge of our students – we’ve got a clever bunch!

After our lessons, we threw on our scientist hat and headed for the field to make observations and record data. Our objective was to mark off a rectangular section of “ecosystem”, measure it and search for all living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) things. The students jumped to the task with magnifying glasses in-hand and found some really cool things – robin eggs, insect eggs and nests, snails galore, mushrooms, and much more. After a “museum walk” to view everyone’s site, it was quite evident that there’s much more than meets the eye in a relatively small area.

After telling a legend, the afternoon had us exploring more ecosystems as we set out on a hike to the far edges of our property. More specifically, we were looking at the biodiversity between ecosystems, in the ecotones. It’s awesome what you can find when you slow down and take a look – the remains of a Northern Flicker, a Turkey nest, edible trout lilies, and that’s just to name a few.

You never know what you’re going to get at Forest School and different days saw many different things happen this week:

TuesdaY

Students were really engaged with ring toss yet again. They also got a chance to become the food chain in a serious rock, paper, scissors competition. This group was the first group to discover the remains of the Northern Flicker (and they chose to leave the beautiful feathers there for the other groups to see – yay LNT principles and nature lovers!). A big portion of them also started work on carving projects, and as always enjoyed some time in their sit spots.

Wednesday

A really cool thing happened on Wednesday – during our exploration one of the students noticed his magnifying glass warmed up his hand. And from there we naturally had to make a fire from it. So we tried and lo and behold, the char cloth caught quick. So we tried other materials – paper, birch bark, tree resin, wood – to see what would happen. We eventually were able to make a fire only using the sun!!!

During a game of camouflage, this group also accidentally (and quite literally) stumbled upon a turkey nest. The mama turkey flew off and we quickly left the area in hopes that she’ll return.

THURSDAY

Wow! What a hot day! So nice we even had to cool down in the spring, and had our first real day where we could take our shoes off this Spring. (And the lightning storms held off just for us!)

The students on Thursday jumped into the roles of Producers, Consumers and Decomposers for a better understanding of food chains. On a sadder note, we experienced this cycle first hand after discovering that our mallard nest was attacked by a hungry predator. We worked through these heavy feelings with the group and realized that this loss is an important part of the food chain. Soon after, we were treated when we discovered a healthy baby of another species – a snapping turtle!

Of course you may have noticed some stinky breath coming from your child after school this week… Tuesday we came across a Leek patch and of course the Wed and Thurs groups had to try!

Congrats to our bead recipients: 3 Leadership Beads, 2 Curiosity Bead, 3 Show and Tell, and 1 Craft bead (for homemade charcloth!)

Next week: Projects!!! We’re going to let our imaginations run wild.

Cheers,

Your Forest School Team (Matt, Kim and Krista)

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Welcome back!

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Hi Folks!

Fresh spring air, and a brand new semester welcomed back all of our fellow Forest School students today, as well as a few new faces! This week at school we dove right back into our regular routines (smudge, check ins) and were all super excited with reconnecting with everyone.

Our morning was all about exploring our grounds, and discovering passions, and curiosity within us. There was also an abundance of tree climbing, shelter building, making new friends and imagination play. We also found an abandoned bees nest!

During our morning hike we came across a large piece of land that was taken out by Beavers! We couldn’t believe the destruction one little furry friend is capable of! This also opened up an awesome discussion, and got the kids using their critical thinking skills. How strong are their teeth? How many Beavers took all the trees down? Where did they build their dam? How long did this take them? We did come across a pile of trees…there might have been a Beaver spotting…it was unclear but we will re visit this site for more investigation.

We also took time to reflect back to the fall, and revisit our fire starting skills, to work towards the Fire bead! It was awesome to see how many students remembered what a fire needs to survive (fuel, oxygen and heat), different types of fuel (tinder, kindling and logs) and how we put fires out (water, stomping and sand).

Our first day back came with lots of love and respect stickers. Along with 2 peer support beads, 2 fire beads, 1 show and tell bead and 1 animal-tracking bead. Great job to all our students! What a way to kick start our spring semester.

Next week – Is all about animals in our area!

Until Next time,

Krista

Check out our great day!

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