Wild & Wonderful Monthly Update

April

We have had a wonderful last month of forest school before beginning summer break. We celebrated Earth Day, challenged students to outsmart erosion, explored a cave, started fires with magnifying glasses, celebrated a successful a Fun Run, and so much more!

Celebrating Earth Day!

April 22nd was Earth Day. In order to celebrate this magnificent day we decided to do a recycling project. We taught the students how to remove the top of a soda can and turn them into candles.

Erosion

This month we learned all about erosion and the effects it can have on houses and neighborhoods.

To see erosion in action we created leveled land with a river running through it.

We then challenged each pair of students to build a lego house with a perimeter no bigger than 16 inches to place on the land to turn the land into a neighborhood, much like we are seeing in Clarksville.

Then came the fun part. We had a heavy “rain” The river quickly filled up and overflowed. Much of the water went into their houses causing damage and some water soaked down into the ground compromising the foundation of the houses they had build. Once they saw the effects that erosion had we then challenged them to

Rebuild their house in such a way that could withstand water
Try and reroute water to prevent erosion from affecting their houses.

Tuesday’s group ran piping under the houses to reroute the water to a hole they had made in the corner of the tote. The water drained successfully!

Wednesday’s group shifted the shape of the river making it wider and having two routes for the water to flow instead of one. Also successful when the rain came again.

Thursday’s group made the ravine deeper and also put retaining walls up in order to see that the water did not reach their houses. Some students also put their houses on stilts, allowing the water to run under their house. All three groups were successful!

To top it off the students found a cave on the land this month! We concluded that this cave was the result of actual erosion taking place

Emergent Curriculum

This past month one of our students brought a magnifying glass to forest school and learned that when angling it the right way in suns rays he could actually burn his finger! Others were quickly intrigued. This led us to learn all about a magnifying glass and how it actually can amplify heat.

We first taught the students how to make char cloth over the fire in order to have a highly flammable material in order to burn under the magnifying glass.

Once the char cloth was made we moved to a location where we would get direct sun rays.

We then learned that a magnifying glass has a convex lens, a type of lens that is thicker in the middle. When light passes through a convex lens, it bends the light towards the center, causing the light rays to converge at a single point. This is why a magnifying glass is able to produce so much heat in order to start a fire.

After a little patience fires were started!

The students were extremely excited to have started their own fire with only a magnifying glass!

We then did a little experiment where we held a magnifying glass up to a dark purple balloon and a white balloon to see which one would pop first. Lighter colors reflect more sunlight, while darker colors absorb more of it. The dark balloon popped rather quickly while the white one never popped.

While collecting our story stones off the ground we discovered a colony of ants underneath, many of them with wings! This got the students curious as to how ants could have wings. Ms. Megan taught the students that drone ants and princess ants have wings and their roles within the colony. She then taught them some fun games to play, one being a very engaging team building activity called Ants on a Log. This is where all the students had to stand on a large log and number themselves 1-10. The students then had to reverse their order from 10 to 1 without falling off the log!

Creek Discoveries & Play

The students found an abundance of large tadpoles this month

We found a very large fish skeleton, estimated 3 feet in length.

On the way to the creek we discovered an Eastern Tent caterpillar preparing to make a cocoon.

The students loved going swimming in the creek any time they got the chance.

Thank you so much to beekeeper Kristin Fulton for coming out and teaching our students all about bees. The children enjoyed the presentation!

Family Fun Run

We are so excited to report that the students raised 800 dollars for TennGreen Conservancy at our Fun Run Obstacle Course! This business helps to conserve land in the state of TN. It was such a great turn out. A major thank you to all the parents that volunteered their time in seeing that the race ran smoothly, baking goodies to sell, making t-shirts for the race, and so much more! Thank you to all the community members that came out and supported us!

More Wild & Wonderful Moments

We reviewed all the material we have learned this past year through a fun jeopardy game

This is the girl’s team deep in discussion over a jeopardy question.

We learned all about the anatomy of a leaf and took some time to label a leaf rubbing.

Ms. Megan reading an intriguing story about the Iditarod Race held in Alaska.

We decided to dress up our class turkey in a new, chic cowboy hat.

A painting made from a dandelion!

Boys enjoying reading together during free play time

The students enjoyed reading their pen pal letters from their forest school pen pals in Texas.

Playing a fun game of Noodle Smash. The student with the noodle is blindfolded and must protect their ball located under their feet. The remaining students must sneak into the middle and steal their ball without being hit by the noodle.

Wrapping up!

It has been an amazing year of forest school! We have had a blast learning together in nature. Thank you to the parents for their faithful commitment to this program. Thank you so much to landowners Stephen and Shakira Carpenter for allowing us to use their beautiful land! We hope everyone has an amazing summer.