We certainly had an awesome time this week at FNS! We learned about wilderness travel and the important parts of a map (making our own treasure maps around the site), honed our compass skills and navigated an orienteering course that some students worked hard to create for us! This course eventually led us to our dear Fossil Mountain – where we examined some contour lines up close… with our toboggans!
We had quite the range of weather this week, allowing us to get our mitts deep into some fun and creative snow structures. We built some epic snow castles and GIANT snowballs, livened up the designs with food colouring, and even raced down hills in our home-made sleds, GT’s and crazy carpets! By Friday, we could feel the sun trying hard to melt our creations, sparking imagination from our learners as they transformed a quinzee to an exploding volcano. It was a blast all week and our students were well prepared and eager to play in the first steady snow week.
Our students are already learning a lot about what it takes to brave the Winter. They are getting their practice at making and sustaining fires in the Winter, being prepared with their own Winter gear (and know the importance of back-up mitts and boots), and are especially making sure we keep hydrated, even though it’s cold out! Big thanks to everyone who made our first snow week such a success!
Speaking of all of this snow, don’t forget to sign up for our winter session! Click here to register!
Wow – what a great week we had with our Project Theme! Students took this opportunity to let their imaginations run wild and built so many different types of projects, including pencil and candle holders, carving projects, crossbows, creative signs for new home décor, an ice fishing stand, a giant cat bed, a home-made fidget spinner, a windmill, a wooden race car, and even new doll clothes from repurposed fabric. Students worked together to build community projects too, including a new swing, a gold panning mine from slides, buckets, nets and pipes, a raft and sail boat, some toboggans and a pulling sled from old skis (which will sure be handy with this fresh white stuff)! Some students even created signs to highlight some of our favourite places on site (like our not-so-secret forts, various campsites and the new “Wal-Matt” wild edible store!
We had a blast working safely and respectfully with tools, sharing equipment and helping one another out with the various projects being constructed. It was extra fun to have a chance to use some projects immediately, like the toboggans, boats and fishing gear. We visited many different spots on the property this week, including Fossil Mountain, where we tobogganed down the Concrete Factory (sand-bogganing on Thursday; snow by Friday!), Riverside, Lakeside and “The Original” Campsites where we had many fires to warm us up. We also explored the other side of the pond, where we found our first ever red-spotted newt on-site!
Some projects that were constructed went beyond physical creations and focused more on community and teambuilding – continuing on previous play, some students focused their energy on continuing their wild edible store and sharing their delicious creations (including a hot soup this time!), some students spent time building forts together and establishing new and improved shelters. It was an awesome week and full of adventure and play.
Without a doubt, you’ve noticed the dip in weather –and while we welcome the snow and all the joy it brings – please remember to bundle up! Pack extras (hats, mitts, socks), wear layers (fleece is great!) under your snowsuit, and don’t forget a thick neck warmer too! It’s also a great idea to have some hot food or drinks at lunch – soups and teas or cider are great this time of year. A HUGE props to the Friday group’s parents for layering up their kids – nobody was ever too cold and we were able to dive in and enjoy our first snowfall of the year!
This week at Forest School we spent our last day of Winter semester building shelters for our community, student led games and reflecting on our time spent with each other. A little fun was also spent around the fire-creating banana boats. Another epic day!
Our morning was spent discovering animals and natural objects around our fishpond, which naturally led into building chipmunk’s and fairy shelters. We then shifted our focus onto shelters for our school. Teamwork, communication and imagination were a huge part of this project. With the use of natural and man made objects our students created the start of their ultimate tree fort!
We also spent some time playing games that our students created, our kids have some amazing imagination!
Ancient Egypt Mummy Attack
Which consisted of two mummy’s and 5 relics.
Sunflower (gave life)
Painted rock (super strength)
Medallion (unlocks secrets)
Bandana (power to see the unseen)
Block with numbers (code)
The goal of the game is to find all the relics and get them to the safe zone before getting caught by the mummy’s.
Dead ants – All ants have to run to different safe zones without getting caught by the anteater.
A few other games were obstacle course and pass the barrier game.
These are awesome games and definitely will be played again!
To finish off our day we took some time to relax and reflected on our time at Forest School. We shared our favourite memories, skills we have gained and beads we have accomplished. Finishing off with report cards and our Winter semester video, which you can watch below.
Thank-you to all the students and parents for being apart of our FIRST Winter semester. All out students came to school ready for an adventure with lots of layers, snacks and happy faces! We had so much fun this semester and looking forward to Spring. Thank-you for taking this adventure with us!
Next Week – Our first day of Spring! Outdoor Skills and Thrills.
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!
In the spirit of March Break we decided to skip out on school this week and head off to Wasaga Beach to discover new parts of our community. We started our adventure at the Nordic Centre in hopes of exploring some new trail systems and after a quick tree ID tag game we were off!
While on the hike, Tuesday’s group made an unanticipated discovery – a HUGE amount of ice among the trees and under the snow from the previous melt. They spent a good chunk of time clearing it off (some students even became official “Zambonis”), creating their own bases and then connecting this intricate network of rooms together. During a debrief/apple cider break, we found out that teamwork and cooperation were the biggest factors in creating this enormous project. (Ahh, emergent learning :)!)
Our Zamboni!
Wednesday we had a chance to swing by the Library before heading to Wasaga to check out some of the cool activities they had going on during March Break and buy some books for our Little Free Library. After we arrived at the Nordic Centre though, imaginations took over and it seemed that as soon as we began our hike we had already stopped to investigate something further. This time instead of ice, it was a giant tree that had fallen over with an exposed root system over 6 ft high. The students quickly got to work on their “archaeological” dig with “hammers” in hand, and sorted out different roles for everyone as they uncovered what lay beneath. We as teachers sat back and watched this magic happen, and eventually this led to a discussion around soil types (with a first hand look at how sandy the soil is in Wasaga) and new life from old. (Again, a big shout out to emergent learning!).
Our “archeological” dig
After a picnic lunch, we played a quick game of Eagle’s Eye and then headed off to the Wasaga Beach Free Spirit site, aka the soon-to-be home of our Little Free Library! While there, we made a a fire together, told stories and ate marshmallows – or rather marsh-ball-ows on Tuesday as they had all melted together in the bag. We took a quick peak at the Nottawasaga river in anticipation of paddling it in the spring, and then had to head back to the school house. Time flies when you are having fun!
A big thanks to those who brought in some books for our Little Free Library project! It’s almost full now!
Next Week:
We have another field trip! We’ll be heading to Singhampton to check out the cave systems there.
We had an amazing day at Forest School this week, and with it being March Break we wanted to take advantage of inside and outside activities, even if it was -18 with wind chill!
We touched back to a topic we focused on last week, which was all about our community, and headed back to the Collingwood public library, for some fun and games. Our focused activity was a 9 hole indoor mini putt! Our kids are excellent putters and played an awesome round of golf! Congrats to Hazel for her hole in one! Gotta love the shocked hole in one face! We were all winners in this game!
We also challenged ourselves with a game of eye spy
“ Eye spy a duck, a pigeon, a belle of the ball, 4 rabbits, 9 T’s and a truck comes when you call. A runaway mouse, a marine band and more, three cameras, two monkeys and a pig for money to store”
After finding all the objects we put our name into a draw for a secret prize, were crossing our fingers we get a call!
Spending time reading to each other was a great way to start our afternoon, also a great way to practice our reading skills. Some of the books that we shared were:
“Tyrannosaurus Drip” by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts
“Duck! Rabbit!” By Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld
“Farm Animals Ponies by Heather C. Hudak and
“If you hold a seed” by Elly MacKay.
We hope you get a chance to read them!
We could have spent all day at the library reading books, playing games and hosting puppet shows, but alas, the sun came out and the woods were calling us!
We visited a new place today located in Wasaga Beach, a local Nordic Centre called “Blueberry trails”. After mapping out where we wanted to explore, we headed down the blueberry trail and trekked our way through a forest of deer tracks and cedar trees. We found a great spot to relax, while some students worked on their ‘Fire bead’, others worked on snow art. All students enjoyed hot apple cider and the sunshine.
Thank you to Hazel for bringing in her show and tell items. Coming from Puru – ‘Chestnut’ her lama stuffy made with REAL llama fur, and her Guinea Pig ‘Taco’ made with real alpaca fleece. Needless to say those were the softest stuffies we have had at Forest School!
We hope that everyone has/had a safe, healthy and of course fun March Break! Looking forward to hear about all the adventures our students got up to.
Next Week – We are going to keep it active and full of exploration!
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!
Mother nature is playing games with us, she’s not sure if she want to leave like a lamb or go out like a lion, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the wonderful world of Maple syrup.
This morning was the start of whittling, and our students were super excited about the idea of using knives, and creating something from nothing. But with learning a potentially dangerous skill, we made sure to cover all of our 6 safety guidelines.
Do not share your knife
Safety bubble
Carve away from oneself
Carve for short periods of time
Wear a glove
Carve slowly
This allowed our students to practice their new skill in a safe, and supervised environment. Our contract has some pretty steep repercussions, so our kids made sure their listening ears were turned on, and everyone did an amazing job learning and memorizing all the rules! All of our students went home with all ten fingers and ten toes!
This afternoon we played a student created Macro Model game called Sappy Sappy, a spin off from the classic game Octopus, but with more role-play. The kids were acting as sap running from the crown of the tree to the roots, while the bucket in the middle could tag the sap and turn them into syrup. We also added another twist, the syrup got to move really s-l-o-w around the field to tag the running sap! Needless to say we held amazing games and a teacher even won a round!
After hands on activities about identifying Maple trees (winter and summer) and learning the fundamental steps of how Maple Syrup is made, we strapped on our winter hats and dove even further into learning by hiking out to our sugar bush. Did you know that within our sugar bush we host 83 tapped trees? With today’s unexpected weather, which was one of the coldest days this week, we naturally came across frozen sap within all the buckets, but that didn’t stop us from sneaking a taste.
We even had the chance to explore the sugar shack, and a huge thank you to Neal, one of our teachers who taught us all about the sticky goodness! Getting to look at the evaporator (papa pot, mama pot and baby pot), fire pits, filters, drills, spiles and buckets. Our students became more aware of all the work that goes into this Canadian trademark. Who knew it took 40 gallons of sap to make 1 liter of syrup!
We even had our first musical instrument show and tell today! Thank you Hazel for bringing in your recorder and playing “Mary has a little lamb” for all your fellow classmates. You wouldn’t believe she had been only playing for one week! We are looking forward to hearing more songs in the future!
By the afternoon the kids couldn’t wait any longer to try some syrup, and what better way to do so but with pancakes! Our students build an amazing fire, and with the help of our Chef and his assistant we ate fire-roasted pancakes covered in maple syrup. Our students also took time to practice their whittling, and explored the valley we set up camp in. Full bellies and happy faces at the end of our day – just the way we like it!
Huge congratulations to all the stickers and beads that went out today. 7 Winter Warrior Beads, 1 Cooking Bead, 1 Musical Bead and 2 Fire Beads. Our necklaces are become so colorful!
Next Week – We are going to be diving into Community Projects. We will be getting hands on, and helpful!
Friendly Reminder – With the warming weather we are going back to drop off and pick up at Bygone Days! So lots of extra layers, water and snacks just incase.
This week brought another great day at Forest School, and today was all about Nature Photography and spending time looking at nature from different points of view. We also enjoyed games, our weekly check ins, reflection time and exploration.
A large portion of our day was spent playing around with cameras, and taking pictures of anything that caught our eye! We talked about composition, contrast, different landscapes and how a picture can tell a story. Thought out the day we brought our focus back on our 6 guide lines of picture taking– Getting close, Leading Lines, Rule of thirds, Natural Framing and Points of view.
After practicing with our cameras we ventured out to the Sugar Shack, which led our students into a Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt. Below are two photos our students took, and it was great to see what our kids saw through their point of view. We will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Shout out – We wanted to say HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY to our big man Layne!
You are incredibly creative, curious and very independent young man. You are a joy to have around each week, with all your jokes and stories, and we look forward to many more weeks to come! We hope this year brings more laughs, play and adventure! Happy Birthday!
Along with our photography theme, we also got creative and earned a craft bead today! Our kids got the chance to create a masterpiece of their choosing. They were given natural objects along with string, beads and paint. Dream catchers and magical sticks (painted sticks) were a big hit. The task was to set their art piece in nature and take a picture of it. Great job everyone!
Oh yeah – this happened today! We bumped into Al and he let us taste some of his Pure Canadian Maple Syrup, tapped right from our own backyard! Needless to say it gave the kids extra energy to run back to the Sugar Shack and check on all the Maple trees. Thanks Al!
Next Week – Due to the unseasonal weather temperatures, we will be switching some weeks around. We will learning all about tapping Maple Trees and tapping for Maple Syrup.
Side Note – If your child has a swiss army knife they are welcome to bring it, as we will be introducing whittling around the fire. We promise to send them home will all ten fingers, and toes!
***This is an archived post from 2017 – our programs are still suspended until further notice – March 2020***
Hey Folks,
Students had the opportunity this week to play around with photography. We got up close and personal with nature and had the chance to see things through a completely new lens. We started the day by playing around with cameras, learning how to work them and testing them out. This led us into various activities, including a “find my picture” hunt and inevitably a full on Nature Photo Scavenger Hunt.
In the afternoon, we went on a long hike around the property and took our photography one step further. We learned about and integrated some different tricks and tips for nature photography:
We learned about “Getting Close”, and seeing the world through a macro lens:
We learned about the use of “Leading Lines”, likes trails or fences, to lure the viewer into the photo.
We learned about the “Rule of Thirds” and how to better place things in a photo.
We learned about “Natural Framing” to capture a photo inside the photo and frame our pictures a little differently.
And finally, we learned about using different “Points of View” in our photos – stepping into a worm’s or ant’s eyes, or seeing like a bird.
Thanks to all the parents who were able to dig up a camera for their child to use. With your help, we were able to equip everyone with their own camera for the day!
Next Week: Although the nice warm days made photography a lot of fun, it also melted the rinks! So because of the weather, we will not be skating next. The positive side to this is that the warm days and cool nights have the Sugar Maples flowing, so we will be doing our Maple Syrup day in lieu of skating.
