Part 1: Observation We have recently adapted the style of documentation called Floorbooks: Talking and Thinking Floorbook Approach, which was created by Claire Warden to give educators a tool to consult and co-create documentation with children. This approach allows children and educators to make their thinking, theories, values and learning visible. This collaborative pedagogical approach allows educators to slow down …
We are so excited to be back in the woods with the Forest School Kinders once again! The children have begun connecting with “their” forest in so many ways and learning how to be safe in a variety of different environments and activitie
With so much happening in the Forest School program, we have decided to take a stab at “Mind Mapping” together as a way of collecting our thoughts and experiences as they occur within the program both inside and outside the Forest and it has proven to be a fun, inclusive and creative way to bring our recollections of our explorations …
Our return to the forest after the Christmas holiday not only brought us a brand new year but also some rather chilly, wintry weather. While the snow didn’t come right away, the cold temperatures had us bundled up for our latest explorations of the woods. We had to take the long way to the forest as there was ice on …
After feeding the forest animals our pumpkins and creating bird feeders with our gourds, we started to notice the birds in our forest and outside our windows a the centre. There were a lot of chickadees moving the snow from our gourd feeder and we started to really notice their actions as they worked to find the seeds. This lead …
Birds and animals have had us captivated in the forest school program. After making bird seed sandwiches for the birds, which they seem to love, we decided to make bird bread of our own using an easy bread recipe and adding bird seeds to the dough before baking it. We had hung a “sandwich” outside our window to observe and …
We arrived to our Nature Classroom to find a plethora of pumpkins and gourds in the the yard. There were pumpkins of all sizes and we wondered where they had come from. We wasted no time exploring with them as we lifted them, noticing which ones were heaviest and lightest and we noticed that a couple were just too heavy …
As fall rolled into full swing, our conversations at circle time started to revolve around the changes we are noticing outside and, especially, in our forest. Everyone agreed that the changing leaves was the most obvious change we saw occurring…well that, and the change in temperature. Our mornings in the forest had been becoming a little chilly. Looking up into …
Monday marked our last day in the forest as well as the beginning of our last week together in Forest School. Where has the past year gone? We made our way to the forest where we were excited to greet the flora and fauna with our good morning songs and cheers of “Good Morning Forest!”. At our circle, we read …
Monday morning we had to battle the thick, humid air and the mosquitoes! It was cooler in the forest than out in the open but we had to keep moving to keep the bugs at bay. We decided to do a forest scavenger hunt. We divided into small groups with each group having its own collecting bag, scavenger hunt sheet …
