Community Forest & Nature School

March 28th 

Spend all day connecting with the land! 

Join Adventures with Nature Norm in the morning at the Interpretive Centre from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. We will be celebrating the shifting of the seasons and all things Spring on the land!

We will break for lunch and warm-up indoors (warming space is always accessible during Forest School any time!). 

From 1:00 - 4:00 pm, we will have play some fun games, and get into some wonderful crafts - coiled and stitched pine needle baskets, fairy houses (multi-tier wooden ones, ones out of mud, ones with loose parts for decorations!), and bug hotels to shelter our tiny relatives during the Spring.

April 22 1:00 - 4:00 pm

In April, we are celebrating Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22! Let's spend the day connecting meaningfully with the land, watching Spring migration in full force, and celebrating our beautiful lives on this precious, wild planet!

We will be building forts and shelters with natural materials, tarps and ropes; needle felting (a wonderfully intuitive fibre art that lends itself to so many types of creations); and learning about safe practices for whittling. 

Find and whittle sticks into dolls (or animals, objects, creatures - your imagination is the limit!), and decorate them through various means, including wood burning, Beam paints, markers, and natural materials.

And of course, enjoy free play, open ended creativity, and exploration on and with the land!

May 2, 1:00 - 4:00 pm

In May we are so excited to be hosting a Dreamcatcher Making Workshop with Alicia Alphonso:

“Boozhoo, Alicia nindizinkaz. Maiingan doodem, Waywayseecappo nindonjibaa.

My name is Alicia Alphonso. I am Anishinaabe from the Wolf Clan, with roots in Waywayseecappo First Nation and Guyana, South America. 

I am a proud mother, ECE III, Forest School Practitioner, Anishinaabe Knowledge Sharer, and lifelong learner who finds peace and purpose in nature. I learned to make dreamcatchers at age 11 alongside my late grandmother, Adelia Clearsky, and that teaching became the foundation of my business. Today, I continue this work by sharing dreamcatcher teachings with my daughter and community, focusing on family, tradition, and passing knowledge to future generations.”

Alicia Alphonso

We will also be playing big group games! (Think Eagle Eye, Predator/Prey, Capture the Flag, Otter and Heron, etc!), and have all the usual Forest School arts & craft materials out, including things to build on from our last sessions!

June date TBA!

On this day we will be offering landscape painting and nature inspired self-portraits. What are some of your favourite animals, plants, and beings in nature? We will creatively integrate them into multi-medium self portraits made through drawing, painting, sculpting, writing, dance and movement, and share them with the group! This is sure to be a lot of fun and we are really looking forward to it.

We will also be offering some herbal First Aid teachings, with plant allies such as Yarrow, Calendula, Plantain and more joining us for the day to share their amazing medicines, stories and healing properties.