We have a wonderful forest behind our school, it’s not school property but it has lots of easy trails to follow. Since school started we have ventured out to the forest on Fridays.
We’ve been learning what we can do and see in this forest. The children are given lots of opportunities to use their bodies and take risks.
We’ve listen to the sounds and spotted little creatures, like this slug sliding across our trail.
Our first walk in the forest our focus was to pick a tree that we could watch change throughout this school year.
We picked a maple tree, a large leaf maple. I tied a green ribbon on it so we can find it each week.
Last Friday we used the school’s nature backpacks with a mission to find leaves from our tree and make rubbings.
All the leaves on the ground were a yellowish-brown. We wondered if they would work or would they crumble while we tried to rub?
Once they each had a leaf they took off their packs, first took out a sit-upon then their clipboard and paper.
They choose a couple of different colour of crayons and began their rubbing.
The dried leaves worked fine. We could see the different parts of the leaves, the ribs and the veins.
We then packed up and headed back to school. Next Friday we will be joined by a Science & Nature teacher and lead us through the forest using our animal senses.
