Fall 2022

Level 1

Wondering outside the door!

This first class of outdoor day we are receiving our first outdoor backpacks that are waterproof along with our new outdoor journals with information about our locations, our welcome poem, our checklist to get ready, and our student progress reporting. We are exploring and observing. We set out without magnifying glasses and found many things in the park like bugs, plants, ducks, and sticks. We collect different things and make a good bucket. How did it sound when it fell into the bucket? This class was used to getting to know each other, our teachers, and Queen Elizabeth Park.

Queen Elizabeth Park

Sepember 10

As we are getting used to being outside in nature we are learning about safety along the way. We added a land acknowledgment to our journals and we will continue to do this before each class. We built animal critters with what we found like leaves, sticks, and rocks. We made faces with our natural materials. We also found that sticks can become fishing rods or paddles for a canoe. We are learning to have calm bodies and listen to nature and we might hear birds chirping or see a squirrel.

Pacific Spirit Park

September 17

We are going on to see the different colours of the leaves. It is fall time and we are noticing leaves are changing color. We searched around for red, orange, yellow, and brown leaves and did a leaf color match. We also made patterns with the leaves we found. We saw catfish, turtles, fountains, a pond, and big red chairs.

Van Dusen Garden

September 24

Pinecone walk. Level 1 did a pine cone walk at Camosun Bog. We had a page added to our journals with the life cycle of a tree. We found many opportunities to see where pine cones come from. We learned they come from coniferous trees. We did a pine cone song counting up to 10 and we sorted pinecones into big and small. We read a story called little tree and in this story, the tree did not want to lose leaves and kept them but remained a small tree. As we walked the boardwalk we noticed a lot of little pinecones and that pinecones come in many shapes and sixes. We see how a pinecone can open and close. We learned that inside the pinecone there are seeds that drop out to grow more trees.

Camosun Bog

October 1

Oct 15

UBC Farm

OCT 22

Vanier Park

Today we talked about how apples grow, where they grow, and some different kinds of apples. UBC farm was full of ripe apples growing on trees, which the kids loved to see. Some apples had fallen off of their tree, so we talked about why that might be and what happens when they fall off (maybe a hungry animal comes and eats it). We learned the words blossom, seed, apple, tree, bud, and core.

Our lesson was focused on wind. We talked about how wind is invisible, what the word “invisible” means, and what wind can do to people and objects (it can move objects and we can feel and hear it.) Our class walked around and tried to find some signs of wind. We had lots of fun making wind wands, which show us the motion of wind.

OCT 29

Musqueam Park

Today we talked about nocturnal animals as a big group. We focused on owls and bats, and spent time walking around Musqueam Park looking for an owl. Each kid got a turn to use binoculars to try finding an owl in the trees. We worked as a team to build a human-sized bird nest with fallen branches, twigs, and leaves. Inside the nest, we ate snack and listened to a story about Halloween.

Our group walked around Pacific Spirit Park today, looking for decomposers. It must have been too cold outside for slugs and some insects to be active, as one of our students observed. After some careful searching, we were able to find worms at the bottom of a still pool of water. We looked at the worms and took some of them out of the water to hold and measure them. After returning the worms to their home, we walked through parts of the forest that had been damaged by the previous-night's storm. We even had to crawl under a massive tree! Finally, we found a nice log to have snack on, and made our way back to the meeting area.