November 16
Fire days are the best! With hot chocolate, donuts, chestnuts, marshmallows, and stone soup on the menu, along with going on a compass hunt, perfect weather, lots of play we filled the day and it went too fast!
We are going to surely miss all your sweet faces, big laughs and listening in on your queens and kings games!
Previous Weeks
After diving into learning about the most important things to pack on a hiking trip and the five c’s of survival, we learned how to make a remote first aid stretcher and splint, along with a lot of natural discussions about what to do if a hiking partner gets injured. We then tried to get in some time to play one of our favourite games man tracker before the sun light was out of reach. Once the dark set, we took to the field for some glow in the dark frisbee and an awesome new game ‘graveyard’!
We had herbalist Becky Murry join us today to show us how to make spruce tip salve! We then had hot chocolate, roasted apples and of course marshmallows! These wildlings went right to it continuing their made up game from the previous weeks.
A day in the mud never felt so right!
Here’s some uses of the blue spruce and juniper berry salve:
– It is anti-fungal and antibacterial!
– Apply to: Cuts, scrapes, rashes, minor burns, cold sores, acne, bug bites and stings, dry skin.
– It has some pain relief action so apply to bruises, strained muscles or sore joints.
– It makes a great chest rub for congestion especially if eucalyptus essential oil (2-3 drops) is applied to chest and the spruce tip salve is applied over that.
Going from t-shirt weather last week to snow and cold this week was hard on the bodies and made this day a day of learning how to be resilient in the cold/snow.
We took on the hard task of learning how to forage for fire starting supplies, in lots of snow! No better time to teach fire starting than in terrible fire weather! Collecting dried roots, and fat wood we truly hit natures gold! After coming back to start fires we roasted Oreo s’mores, hotdogs and enjoyed hot coco!
We collected a bucket of snow, hypothesized how much we would be left with when melted, then melted it. We discussed, after seeing the results, of how eating snow is not the best idea in a survival situation and could even make you more dehydrated.
We ended to day listening to a friendly Witch story and laughing as we all tobogganed down the hill in a big train.
The sun gifted us today with one last hot day of the year (maybe) and we took advantage! After quite a while of piling up, hiding and jumping in thousands of leaves we headed to the river for one last river day of the year (maybe)… who knows, its Alberta!
After a demo/discussion on how to pan for gold we dove into the world of panning. even though we don’t have much or any gold here, we still find lots of interesting rocks and garnets. Opening up very natural conversations about minerals and the rock cycle.
These wildlings then invented a game of warriors that protected kings and queens. Which was incredible to stand back and watch as every single one of them dove into this growing and evolving game! What imaginative kids you have!
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination” Albert Einstein
What an awesome day to learn a new wilderness skill and become a little more resilient in the cold and rain. We set off to find the perfect stick, collect sap and crush charcoal to make natural adhesive and spears. These kids will never look at sap the same way!
We ended the day huddled under the tarp with a gentle patter of rain over us listening to a story.
We sure have some foraging enthusiasts in this group! On our forging/exploring walk, we collected many different edibles and talked about how to be a responsible forager. We explored and collected seashells and crawfish skeletons down at the dry riverbed. We sadly came across a dying animal on the dam’s pavement. With all the kids feeling sad, i wrapped it and scooped it up to take to a safer and more comfortable place to pass away which made everyone feel a little bit better. Returning back after our long walk we settled in to make our foraged tea, play games, and listen to stories.
With the wind as our constant welcomed friend today, we settled in to learn knife and saw safety and went to work with many excited wildlings whittling away.
Some wildlings experimented with making buckberry paint, while others used hammers and drills on our “deck”.
We played on the slack line playing made up games and finding our balance. Explored the world of liquorice seeds as they lined our hills learning how they mimicked Velcro, talking about how many people that invent things get their inspiration from spending time in nature with wonder in their mind.
We ended the day listening to an indigenous story I was told then given permission to share. Then whittling till the very last second reading Blackfoot Legends of different animals.
There seemed to not be enough time in the day to fit in all the important play we were having!
We set off to forage for apples and fire starting materials. With all these wildlings having used ferro rods, they set right to work getting their own and our group fire roaring. These wildlings cut up many apples adding them to our wild apple cider. Feeding the fire and checking the apple cider along the way we played on our favourite Forest School hill and relaxed on the hammocks.
We Gathered around to sip our apple cider, roast marshmallows and make Oreo s’mores. After that we ended the day with a group story telling that always ends up with good belly laughing and playing camo learning how to blend into the landscape.
What a fun and kind group of wildlings!
The explorer energy in this group was tangible. They wanted to go further and further and deeper and deeper into the woods, trying liquorice root and wild crab apples along the way. Splitting off to two groups, one that wanted to stay on land and explore further and one that wanted to extensively explore the river!
As we hiked down the river we experienced all the river had to give us. Did we struggle? YES! Did we persevere? YES! Is was a beautiful thing!
Ending up down at our river site for some clay digging, dam building, crawfish hunting, minnow catching, reading books and snacking on the picnic blanket.
Can’t wait for all of our future adventures!
Side note: 😊 If you haven’t yet, could you put a hand towel in your child’s backpack along with 2-3 empty bread bags. We end up using these things quite a bit. Also use your best judgment for what to wear. If it’s not to cold we tend to go in and out of the water quite a bit, water just calls to every Childs heart!
