The Forest School at Scanlon Creek Conservation Area is a unique initiative – a six-week program that invites kids to experience nature, explore and get creative.
As a certified forest school practitioner, Cassandra Connell explained, “It’s to provide outdoor play opportunities for kids, that are open-ended, child-directed and curiosity-based.”
Designed for kids between the ages of five and 10, Forest School meets once a week, over the six-week period, and starts each afternoon at the Discovery Play Garden at Scanlon.
“We decide as a group what we’re going to do that day,” said Connell. “It’s a lot of free play, that gives them the opportunity to build confidence,” and use their imagination and creativity.
Within that framework, there are nature hikes, and the opportunity to learn everything from tree identification using apps, to basic principles of physics. “It just depends on the kid, and what their question is,” said Connell.
The result can be “pretty cool,” she said. “What I like the most is it’s just unlimited.”
The Discovery Play Garden includes a mud kitchen, sandbox with gardening tools, shovels and pulleys, a building area with a variety of blocks, musical walls, water feature, play hut, slack line and a new “Mud Kitchen” with pump-action sinks, water, and utensils.
“They have the opportunity to create whatever they want,” said Connell. A student can start in the mud kitchen using the spatula, then use the same spatula as a catapult, a shovel, a drumstick – “whatever you want!”
The program is not curriculum-based; instead it’s based on the concept of “schemas” or concepts in learning. It recognizes that all kids like to throw things, climb, hide, dig, and build; Forest school “is creating safe opportunities for them to do that,” said Connell.
“It looks like they are playing, but they are learning,” she said. Kids also build confidence, when they try challenges like the slack line, slung between two trees, and discover they can do it.
“It’s building positive outcomes,” she said.
Forest School is held twice a year, in the spring and the fall. The current session wraps up on Oct. 23 – but on Friday, Oct. 4, the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) held a Forest School Open House, inviting kids and their families to drop by, learn more about the program – and play.
Forest School is held on Wednesday afternoons at Scanlon. About 60 percent of the kids who attend are home-schooled; the rest are taken out of school for the afternoon by “families that see the value of this,” Connell said.
The fall session of Forest School wraps up on Oct. 23; the next session will be held in the spring. Interested parents are asked to watch the LSRCA website for details.
And the LSRCA is offering one-day PA Day Camps at Scanlon, on Monday, Oct. 21 and Friday, Nov. 15, giving kids ages six to 12 an opportunity to connect with nature, through hiking, exploring, orienteering, wilderness survival skills and nature photography and art.
The Adventure PA Day Camps run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, for only $45 per day per participant; extended care to 5 p.m. is available for an additional $10.
For more information, or to register, call 905-895-1281 or click here.
It’s all about Nature as a classroom.
“When you remove the walls, you remove those barriers,” Connell said. “You get a different kid.”
