Neal found a full fire extinguisher…or at least the kids thought it was full…it was empty, but the reactions were priceless!
We would like to welcome back all of our students to Free Spirit Forest School for the winter semester and we are happy to introduce one of our newest teachers; Neal!
This week was all about getting comfortable with outside travel. We took time to set our intentions for Forest School meaning, how we treat fellow classmates and things we want to let go of either personally or physically.
The lack of snow didn’t slow us down. We kept positive and made the best of our icy, winter wonderland! We are looking forward to the rest of our semester and all the adventure it will bring us through exploration and curiosity. The sky is the limit!
Forest School 2017 Class Photo
We welcome our new class of 2017! They are strong, hilarious, curious and a genuinely happy group of kids that we are excited to spend every Thursday with!
“The Earth Ship” is now our drop off and pick up location so we decided to start our day with a quick exploration around our new grounds. We found a wonderful moment when our students built their very first firepit. Many hands helped with this project and we couldn’t have had a better turn out! Through communication, working together and hard work our students built their first project together. Great job guys and gals!
One of our tasks of the day was to create our “Forest School Agreement” between students and teachers. It was wonderful to see all students participating in delivering what they want to get out of Forest School. We discussed respect (personal, other students boundries and our surroundings), listening (the difference between hearing and listening), communications and many many more. Check out what the kids came up with!
Our last adventure of the day was to gain the skills and knowledge to hunt down objects to create their own “emergency” snowshoes. We cut sticks, braided willow twigs, used ripped up t-shirts and twine. All of our students were able to create snowshoes that stayed afloat and held their body weight. We are super proud of all the hard work that went into their shoes and are excited to use them in further activities.
Dax showing off his “A” frame snowshoes
Congratulations to all our students who received their first of many respect stickers. Next week we are looking forward to giving away some beads! Keep up the good work everybody!
Next Week – Is all about wilderness survival! We will be looking at Food, Shelter and Fire…..we wonder what the kids think they will need to survive?
Welcome back everyone to our Winter Semester at Free Spirit Forest School – and what a great kick-off we had! This week was all about getting comfortable and really enjoying the Snow – and evidently ice on Wednesday. Though buses were cancelled both days, that didn’t stop us from exploring. We built snow forts, went tobogganing, pretended to be animals lurking in the snow and much more.
After an epic snowshoe all the way to Maple Forest and back before lunch, we learned all about this important method of travel – its history, the different styles and their inspirations, and the many, many uses of a snowshoe. Did you know that snowshoes date back thousands of years? The students were put to test afterwards in teams by coming up with a design and developing their very own “emergency” snowshoes. With braided twigs, sheets of wood, torn jean strips, even a full shirt, each team’s idea differed, but in the end all kept their users afloat on the snow.
Emergency student-created snowshoe!
Congrats to our Bead Recipients this week – 1 Peer Support and 3 Show and Tell. We have sent home a list of beads (or click hereto see it) that students can be working towards this semester.
Also, A HUGE THANKS to you, the parents, for your awesome layering and extra clothes – all students were warm and happy despite the weather!
Next Week:
We’ve planned a Winter Survival day, but this may be adapted depending on the amount of snow we get. Regardless, we’ll be exploring, playing with new friends and appreciating our green spaces!
Also, this week was a good wake-up call for us in implementing a Snow Day Procedure. We will be following the Simcoe County District School Board. If buses are cancelled, we still run. However, if it’s a full on Snow Day and everything is closed, we will adhere to that.
On our last day of Forest School this year, the students’ skills were put to the test with an Amazing Race. Just like in the show, the classes had to work their way through Team Challenges, Road Blocks (completed by one person) and Detours (choice between 2 activities) while earning materials (tinder, kindling, a pot, etc) along the way for their final challenge of the day.
The Amazing Race encompassed almost everything we’ve covered this semester. Various challenges, like the tarp flip, human knot and blindfolded hikes, showed us just how well these groups worked together as teams. The group dynamic here was quite powerful! Other activities challenged hard skills (knots, compass and GPS use, and fire building) while knowledge tests showed us just how much they’ve learned and retained this year. We even called on skills we haven’t learned here, like clues being translated from French!
No matter the challenge, they rose to it. Throw in some snowshoeing, tobogganing, “skating” on the pond, and cedar tea made over the fire (the Final Challenge) and we’ll call it a day well spent outside.
In the spirit of the day, we spent a good chunk of it debriefing the year and looking forward to the next aspects of Forest School. Students were reflective when filling out their report cards and gathered all their stuff (sticker boards, journals and medallions) to take home. As many of you know, we wrapped the day up with a gathering at the Earthship for some drinks and a movie (see above for the movie!)
A big, big thanks to you, the parents, for believing in what we are doing and trusting in us to accomplish this. We couldn’t do it without your constant support. It’s been a real pleasure teaching, learning and growing with your kids. We are loving the sense of community that is developing with this program and are eager to keep it going! See you in the New Year!
Next year:
-If your child or children are returning, please send them back with their journals and medallions so they can continue collecting new beads.
-While we will still be using the property at Bygone Days, we are excited to be calling the Earthship our home for the Winter Semester! (How incredible is it that our classroom is in an Earthship?!) Drop off and pick-up will be there (633 Sixth St) at the same times.
– Please note that we’ve put up a tentative schedule for the Winter Semester on our calendar.
Enjoy the Winter break! Have a happy and healthy holiday and Merry, Merry Christmas!
Our first semester of Forest School ended just the way it started, AMAZING. Our jam packed day consisted of our students using the skills, and knowledge they have obtained here at Forest School. “The Amazing Winter Race” started with us using a map to navigate ourselves to 7 different checkpoints, which consisted of various team-building activities, a crazy spider web, snow lava rock wall, and more mapping with our “Santa candy cane hunt”. We spent so much time today talking about our favourite memories, and what we are excitied about for the Spring.
This morning brought us back to Animal tracking week! Aaron had a keen eye with finding these bunny tracks right beside the Greenhouse.
Izzy was kind enough to bring in a very special rock to show the class before our amazing race. She called it a “Peacock Rock” This picture does not give the colour within the rock justice. Thank you Izzy for bringing in such a special rock to share with us.
We tested our memory with our Forest School matching game. Everything that we had talked about within class was brought up in this fun game. It was challenging for all of our students but everything was matched up by the end of it! Great job everyone you worked so hard!
Enjoying some active play over lunch, and letting our imaginations run wild! Did I mention we have some beautiful minds?
It’s a good thing we know how to read a map, or we would be walking in circles all day long! Our map took us all around our spacious Heathcote property and let us create new memories to treasure, it’s pretty amazing where a map can take you.
Our last task was to create another fire! One fire was started by Alice, Jack and Emily. Our kids have gained the skills and knowledge to seek, build and start their own fires without any help at all! I am so proud of everyone and all their hard work. Finding down sticks under the snow isn’t easy.
I cannot thank you enough (parents and kids) for the incredible 1st Forest School semester we just had, and jumping into this program with me! We have crushed our goals, gained knowledge, confidence and budding friendships through our laughter and tears. We are looking forward to the all the new ones we make this Spring!
Check out our bonus pictures below!
Have a healthy, happy holiday everyone! See you in the New Year!
With winter finally here we decided to stay close to home and focus our day on fire, shelter and cooking! The windy weather did not slow our students down..I think it gave them more energy! It was also great to see the kids imagination play unfold with each other, from turning the sleds into a train (stops and pick up included) to being reindeer, and gathering food. This bonding time is extremely important for our kids to connect with eatchother and create memories! To earn our cooking bead this week, we decided to challenge ourselves with bread, and a sweet treat with chocolate chip cookies!
Question of the day was: How burnt does the food have to be before you do not eat it?
As per usual our day started with our smudging ceremony, check-ins, and of course our amazing show and tell items that our students brought from home. A huge Thank-you to Alice for bringing in a seagull skull (it was incredibly clean as well), and Adam brought in a fully intact bees nest…no bees included.
We are so proud of Aaron for rocking his first fire today! Aaron used minimal amount of tinder and dead, dry and down sticks from our area. The fire kept us super warm all day! Thanks buddy!
We focused on a different type of shelter today, which was the “Quincy”. This common winter shelter is a snow mound that will be dug out to be able to fit one or two students at a time. We started in the green house with an in-class discussion about this type of shelter, and then took our learning outside to create this structure. We are hoping that the snow fall this week will add to our shelter and help make it bigger!
These awesome little people were working hard on earning their cooking bead today, and if you didn’t eat the burnt part of the bread, it was pretty amazing! Butter makes everything better…or so they say!
We took a break from our winter wonderland to create some Christmas ornaments from natural, and man made objects. Our students have amazing imaginations and at the end we came out with some awesome creations to take home.
Cookies…..need I say more?
High Fives all around for all our students who worked so hard today with Quincy building, fire starting, cooking and active group play! There was a lot of beads and stickers earned today: 3 cooking beads, 3 storytelling beads, 2 respect stickers and 1 honesty.
Next Week – We cant believe how fast the time has gone and how sad it will be to say “goodbye” next Wednesday at our final week of the fall semester! We will be putting our students to the test on our Winter wonderland “Amazing Race” challenges. Let the games begin!
We’ll do a breakdown by day this week, as the days seemed to unfold with some variance this week!
Tuesday After our usual ceremonial start to the day, students were tasked with the challenge of setting up a tarp structure nearby – large enough to fit everyone in it and sturdy enough to weather the storm (ie. Matt with a bucket of snow). They’ve been learning about natural structures throughout the semester and had the opportunity to sew their previous knowledge together for this activity. Because of their incredible teamwork, creativity and resourcefulness, this was a huge success for our students.
Making a tarp shelter
Thanks to Mother Nature, snowshoeing is our new preferred form of locomotion when we are traveling around the land. So we ventured into the woods where we made char-cloth, practiced our flint and steel sparks, shared stories, contributed to our existing natural shelters, listened to a teaching bead about fire nests and simply enjoyed our first real snowfall at Forest School… all around our student-made fire!
Earning a teaching bead: teaches us how to make a fire nest to start the fire.
Wanting to warm ourselves up, we tapped into a local resource we have and used the Youth Centre space for lunch! What a great space to play low-organized games and take part in cooperative learning! Students also had a nice warm place to master some new knots that will be helpful moving forward! Some students were able to master multiple knots, including the bowline, double figure-eight, truckers-hitch, half-hitch, slip and more.
We finished our day off back at By Gone Days after another snowshoe out to our far campsite. Here we filled out fire-kits, recognized some peer appreciations and enjoyed some active play in our shelters. We just love seeing your children engage with one another outside using their incredible imaginations – some being waitresses using sheets of crisp snow, others spending snow-money to buy material for their nature-house, and others still just climbing and falling into the deep snow-covered ground.The benefits of child-initiated play are vast – including motor skill development, healthy social development and increased activity level. But sometimes, it’s as simple as hearing the giggles and laughs, and watching the creative play unfold. The way that they connect with one another and interact so fully with their environment surely shapes how they will see nature for the rest of their lives.
Wednesday The students on Wed couldn’t wait to jump into the snow. They dropped off their packs, suited up with snowshoes and were off to take advantage of the fresh, untouched powder! After our usual morning routines (smudge and check-ins, done inside because of the weather!) the students were given the challenge of setting up a tarp they could all fit under. Because we’ve made numerous natural shelters already, this was the very last challenge in order to earn their shelter beads. With huge gusting winds and drifting snow, they sure did earn them!
As the winds picked up even more, we moved inside and practiced other hard skills. Students created their long-awaited fire kits (thanks for the jars everyone!) with birch bark, saw dust, candles, cattails and more. We created and tried using a bow drill. It was hard, tiring work but with the friction we were able to make smoke and we are confident that next time we’ll be able to start a fire from it.
working hard to catch a spark!
Students were also given the chance to earn their Knots bead today. The mission was to learn a Bowline knot – see if your child can recreate it at home! Some students were able to master other knots as well including the double figure-eight, truckers-hitch, half-hitch and more.
After lunch, a couple fantastic Craft Bead presentations, and some exploratory-time, the Sun finally came out and we were off to brave the conditions again. Students got on their snowshoes and off we went – straight into the wind! We cut across the field and found shelter in the trees. Once out of the wind, students built their own shelters and we finished the day gathered around a small fire.
Congrats to all Shelter and Knot bead recipients, as well a Travel Bead, Teaching Bead (for teaching compass skills), Nature Lover Bead, 2 Craft Beads, and some Reflection Beads!
Next Week:
Hard to believe it’s our final week of the Semester! We’ll be having some fun in a Winter Wonderland “Amazing Race” style challenge.
Afterwards, we invite every to our Final Celebration at Bygone Days farm is the weather is good and if it is freezing, windy and or snowy then we will host it at the Collingwood Earthship 633 Sixth street at 3:15 pm.
A big thanks to all the parents for having everyone dressed perfectly for the conditions this week! We’ve noticed that a scarf or neck warmer, second pair of gloves and extra socks would be a great addition to the winter clothing list.
Though tough for drivers, the snowstorm over the weekend was sure welcomed by us! It gave the perfect amount of time for local animals to run around and have their prints frozen in place for us to discover. As the temperatures warmed up, we were able to also see lots of tracks captured in the mud.
Tracking animals was our goal this week – and we were after much more than just footprints. Deer hair on trees, animal pee and, yes, even some coyote scat were all welcomed signs. We also used our ears to hear if animals were giving themselves away… turns out there is a lot of noise in silence.
Overall, we found a bunch of different animal tracks. Lots of white-tailed deer, some red foxes, rabbits, geese and other birds, and of course, Aden! He also gave us a first hand look at canine paws – toes, claws, dew-claws, and the heel. Some students even put their skills to use to track the teachers and find them!
On both days, and in different areas throughout Loree forests, the children were drawn to the hills and made impromptu slides with all the snow. It was magical to see the imagination, teamwork and good old fashion fun come to life.
Towards the end of the day, after completing Track ID 101, finding tracks, GPS tracking, and interpreting a picture of tracks by creating a story of what happened, the students had one more task to complete before receiving their Animal Tracking Beads: survive “Survival”. And they did. Congrats to all our new Tracking Bead recipients!
In addition to the Animal tracking beads, we gave out a record this week – 3 beads to one student, in one day! A couple of people received the Nature Lover Bead, other earned their Reflection Beads (for 15+ journal entries), a few creative Craft Beads were distributed, and a wonderful Teaching Bead on the origins of Popcorn. With only 2 weeks left, please encourage your children to finish up any bead work!
Next Week: Shelters!!!
FRIENDLY REMINDERS:
Even though we are now into some Winter weather, we are still pretty comfortable at Bygone days. We plan to be outside as much as possible so please remember to send your children with layers… too many is better than not enough. At minimum your child needs a good warm toque and mittens/gloves, warm coat and snow pants, with a back up pair of splash pants. A back-up pair of gloves and hats would be good too. Remember – we are out exploring and sometimes that means snow, puddles, mud, etc. Thanks to everyone who is ensuring this – learning can’t happen when we are cold.
Our classroom is unheated and usually not much warmer than outside. On our end, we have:
A new Chiminea to have a fire going nearby
Small heaters to dry gloves
A kettle and tea (please send your child with a mug if they would like some; and it warms the hands!)
Extra gloves/hats just in case; and
For especially cold days, access to a warm space at the Youth Centre (though this is our last resort)
And one final thing! We’ve had some inquiries about Forest School for the winter semester. Just to clarify, some parents thought their children were going to be automatically enrolled in the winter semester which is not the case. If you want to enroll for the winter semester, you need to go to https://fsforestschool.com/register/. Or you can email Jennie Elmslie at freespirittours@hotmail.com. Spaces are beginning to fill up!
Challenge: Go out and explore this week with your child!
This week we headed out to Loree Forest with our Collingwood Forest school crew. This popular hiking spot connects onto the Bruce Trail, which is 840km long! Our goal was to hunt down some great animal tracks, and decipher what we found. Loree forest is tucked away within the beautiful Niagara Escarpment, which is protected by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). We are lucky to have access to all these amazing trails here in The Town of Blue Mountains, they allow us to always be able to have an adventure, without even leaving our backyard! Check out how our awesome Forest School kids spent their day!
The brisk air didn’t stop us from exploring the great outdoors.
Our kids waiting to go on our hike!
Our active play is a great way to burn off our energy from all the excitement forest school brings. Within our morning walk, we found a wolf and a german shepherd protecting their baby “Mine craft wolf.”
We took some time to discuss different types of prints we might see on our hike, while knowing the difference between a “canine” and an “feline” footprint. Some of the animals we focused on were: Coyote, Dog, Fox, Cougar, Black Bear, Deer, Turkey and Rabbit.
A huge thank you to Adam and Alice for bringing in some amazing animal findings. Adam was lucky to find a FULL shed skin from a milk snake, while Alice found a piece of fox jaw, and two back bones from an unknown bird.
These two pictures show a glimpse of the animal tracks we found on our hike. There must have been a party we were not invited to, because there was an abundance of deer and turkey footprints.
Warming up by the fire is a staple activity for us at Forest School, and it just never feels right without roasting some marshmallows. Our kids are getting really good at starting their own fires, and being able to use a “strike-anywhere-match”. We spent some time telling each other interesting facts about animals. Some examples were “Elephants are pregnant for an estimated 2 years”, “Beavers slap their tails on the water to scare predators”, “Wolfs can birth a litter of 9”, and yes “Bears do poop in the woods”.
Our last activity of the day was to create some music, and magic with our own music sticks!! We made them with yarn, bells and sticks we found. The bells brought a little Christmas spirit to our day, and was a fabulous end to a jam packed, fun filled day!
Great job to everyone who found an animal track, it was tricky but everyone pulled it off and found something amazing! This meant we handed out our FIRST Animal Tracking bead, with a total of 6 tracking beads.
Reminder – We are expecting lots of snow this week so extra gloves, scarves or neck buffs are a great idea to keep extra warm…maybe winter has decided to stay!
Next Week – We will be focusing on another new bead, the cooking bead. Our class took a poll and will be making cookies and home made bread, so yummy! Hopeful there will be some leftovers, but we can’t make any promises.
Thanks for reading this week, talk to you next week!
A close inspection of the bathroom wall in the Earthship
Hey Folks!
What better way to start our “Projects Day” than with a visit to one of Collingwood’s coolest projects – The Earthship. Aptly named because, like a spaceship or sailing ship, the Earthship gets everything it needs from the Earth and will be completely sustainable! This inspirational project taught us many things:
The potential of using recycled materials to build (ie. tires and bottles for walls)
Concepts around geothermal and passive heating
Creative ways for rain water collection
The significance of having a green house inside the house and a community garden out back.
The impact of volunteering – we heard that some students and their parents have worked on the Earthship too. We know that many hands make light work!
Maybe even most importantly, visiting the Earthship showed us the power of a dream come to life. A big thanks to “Principal” Matt for giving us a tour of his soon-to-be home and sharing with us the process of making his dream come true. Check out a recent article on it here or the website to volunteer and learn more.
Back at the school, we used this motivation to get into our own projects. After learning about our (fairly strict) guidelines, some students started a natural craft by beginning to carve wood into spoons. This project was a good lesson in visualizing, cultivating patience and taking things slow. We hope to have a finished project by the end of the semester!
Starting our spoons
Students also had the opportunity to tackle another big project using recycled material. They up-cycled an old fleece blanket into new mitten liners by hand sewing. Most students loved developing this new skill and made some pretty amazing mittens! We heard a lot of buzz about making these as Christmas gifts.
Homemade mitten liners
Throw in some slacklining, team building activities, and the beginnings of our fire-starter kits and we called it a day!
Congrats to our 2 Craft Beads and 1 Storytelling Bead recipients!
Next week: Animal Tracking! We are off on a field trip to Loree Forest.
This week we challenged our students to see how they would survive a night lost in the woods. The morning had us off to our old campsite to take some quiet space alone to reflect on what it would feel like to be lost – what would you be thinking? What would you do? What could you use around you to stay safe?
During our debrief around the fire, we uncovered that immediately your psychology and attitude are a huge aspect to dealing with a survival situation. We called this S.T.O.P. – Stop, Think, Observe and Plan.
We then dove into the 4 Core attributes to Survival which, on both days, students were able to brainstorm on their own through discussion. Shelter, Fire, Water, Food – and in that order. The most important thing is staying warm (which we had first-hand experience with this week – and thanks to you, the parents, for all the great layers you sent your kids with!)
We had a lot of fun putting the 4 Cores into practice and students realized that they already had a lot of the skills needed. We made fires, shelter and did some exploratory hiking (and even “Sand”boggoning on Wed). In teams, we played out a scenario involving a plane crash and prioritized 12 items we would need and why – there were no wrong answers, just a need to justify. Oh, and how could any Survival day be complete without a little Animal Survival game?
Congrats to our Peer Support Bead recipient, 2 Reflection Beads, 1 Craft Bead and an amazing Storytelling Bead!
Next Week: We’ll be having some fun and getting creative making projects!
