Build an Adventure in Your Forest

This spring students at East Montpelier Elementary School launched the beginning of our most popular ECO lesson to date.  These kindergarten and first graders at EMES were really looking to put their big creative energy to use. We presented the students with a wide variety of tools and inclusions. If you had ropes, buckets, carabiners, and a pulley what could you do? These students jumped in with ideas and focus that turned into The ECO Carnival. Ropes were soon being weaved between trees and buckets hung from various heights. By paying a carnival designer an American Beech leaf,  you could choose from a selection of forest grown games.  Your prize for landing a snowball in a moving bucket? Two large White Pine branches decorated with green twine. A trophy of sorts!

In another, much quieter area of the forest, students pounded charcoal and elderberries in The Pencil Store. Other children silently carved red osier and striped maple branches into pencils with a tool of choice, the Lancashire Potato Peeler.  Paper and journals were brought out of backpacks and soon students were writing letters and secret messages with their new handcrafted pencils with elderberry ink. Deliveries were made by messengers throughout the forest.  Who wants to buy a pencil at The Pencil Store?
 

The Pencil Store is open!

Making charcoal ink

 

Composing a letter

 

 Thanks to the children at EMES we have been wrapping our year in area schools by offering the children “workshop time” in the forest during ECO. We can easily align all the learning that was happening with our new Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. Force and motion being a very popular one!
Although, that’s not what the teachers were noticing first about their students highly focused participation during these workshop times. The option of choice, self discovery, innovation, trial and error, communication and cooperation with peers,…the list goes on.  Many amazing and creative ideas and projects have sprouted up from this time. A life size Bald Eagle nest, obstacle courses made from willow whips, a chairlift for mice, rope swings, kid sized zip lines and you can’t have a workshop without being properly fed. Dandelion Pancakes anyone?

Dandelion Blossoms for Cooking

Ken makes the best pancakes EVER!

 

Around the fire, we are cooking and relaxing.


 

Why I build fires.

Each day we meet for Forest School, we make a fire.  It is a warm and welcoming ritual in the snowy, deep winter of central Vermont.  

 

But I have to admit, I wasn't always so keen on having a fire.  The pre-fire logistics of gathering kindling, requesting firewood donations from parents, checking the weather forecasts for wind and snow and rain all seemed too daunting.  Plus, with my poor circulation, the thought of having to take off my expedition-style mountaineering mittens to start a fire seemed worse than sitting for a few hours without a fire!  I would relegate the fire responsibility to my co-leader and supervise free play and tell stories instead. 

But earlier this week, when my co-teacher offered to join the group for free play, I somewhat ambivalently accepted the role of "Fire Tender."  It was a relatively warm day for mid-February (mid-20 degrees F) and Zach had already started the fire.  All I had to do was add more wood and stir the coals when the fire started to dwindle.  The crackling fire and the sounds of children laughing and shouting in play was comforting and I found a pleasant rhythm to my task.  I came to appreciate that task of tending fire really requires one to cultivate tenderness - attentive, patient, alert and observant.  In essence, being with the fire was quite similar to how I strive to be with my students.  The hour of tending fire passed surprisingly quickly, interspersed by visits from children to warm their hands, dry their mittens and share an interesting observation, and there was a welcoming fire for our end of the day Thanksgiving circle and closing rituals.  

This afternoon was a pivotal moment for me.  I used to skeptically approach fires as something too "crunchy" for me and a practice that was too time consuming to meld with my teaching style.  But I have really come to appreciate the immeasurable value of teaching with a fire.  

After going over some basic safety expectations with your fire guests, the fire is an amazing management tool.   The students naturally gravitate towards it, they are focused and thoughtful around it.  We eat lunch around it, share stories while gazing into its depths, and have it as a gathering point to return to after play and exploration.  

There are countless science lessons that flow from it. Hello, states of matter!  Not to mention cooking, change over time, social studies, tool use, and the list goes on.  It is fun to see what these kindergarten and first grade students know about fire and what preconceptions they have about how things burn and what the difference is between steam and smoke.  I am lucky enough to have colleagues with myriads of experience teaching with fire and who have created lessons involving safe practices with fire.

Plus, the very act of gathering around a fire is powerful and is something that has been practiced for centuries. In a culture that is ever-more focused on deriving pleasure from staring at screens, there is something peacefully rejuvenating that happens when you're staring into a fire with beloved students and colleagues.