8:00: Arrival/Morning Work

Students arrive at school and say goodbye to their parents and caregivers. A teacher helps small groups safely cross the road, and then the children follow ‘the squirrel path’ through the forest to our base camp. Children greet classmates as they arrive and chat informally with friends while storing materials brought from home in the bin that marks their spot under our tarp shelter.

Teachers help students check in with their bodies, assess the clothes they are wearing, and decide whether layers need to be added or removed. On hiking days, children pack a snack and their water bottle in their backpack.

Children read the morning message on the whiteboard individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. On hiking days, children are asked to vote for their desired hiking destination, either by adding their name to a chart on the whiteboard or writing down where they would like to hike on a slip of paper. When everyone has voted, the votes or ballots are tallied as a group.

Sometimes morning work includes a provocation or challenge written in the morning message such as:

What will you do in the forest today? Draw a picture and then label your drawing.

Stitching Challenge! Try sewing with a wrap-around stitch on your burlap coffee sack. Try drawing a picture on your coffee sack and stitch along the lines you drew.

Look closely at the bird nest we found yesterday. What do you notice? What do you wonder?

Math Challenge! How many mushrooms are growing along the squirrel path? Take a clipboard and use tally marks to record how many mushrooms you can spot while walking the squirrel path from the entrance to our forest spot to our tarp shelter.

8:30: Forest Time

We understand and respect that our students arrive at school with a variety of different needs. After morning work, children are free to choose how they spend their first hour in the forest. Many of our students are already feeling hungry and begin with a quick snack. Some children prefer to ease into their day with calmer activities, such as looking at books, requesting a teacher read aloud, stitching, or spending solitary time in their hammock. Others are immediately ready to move their bodies, and race to the far corners of our forest classroom for lively imaginative play or heavy work, such as building forts or constructing bridges across the stream.

9:30: Morning Hike (or More Forest Time)

Before heading out on the trail, children count off in English so that we know that everyone is present, and then we double-check by counting again in Spanish. Later in the year we use skip counting to see how many eyes are in line (counting by 2’s) or how many toes are in our line (counting by 10’s) or challenge the children to line up by height (shortest to tallest) or in rainbow order according to adventure suit color.

Morning hikes are all about the journey, and not the destination! The trails are full of discoveries waiting to happen, and frequent stops are made to check out slugs eating mushrooms, dissect piles of scat, collect poke berries for making dye, snack on autumn olives or other wild edibles, learn about the unique sound that gave the Quaking Aspen tree its name, and to discuss how familiar parts of the landscape have changed since our last visit.

10:00: Snack and Meeting

Around 10am, the children begin to chorus "Tengo hambre!" (I'm hungry in Spanish) and we know it's time to stop and eat a snack! Whether we are in the forest, at the top of ‘grasshopper hill’, or under our tarp, meal times are long and leisurely opportunities to refuel our bodies while swapping stories, ideas, and wondering together as a class. Often children will talk about their morning forest or hiking experiences, share news from home, or ask questions to discover what we have in common and what makes each of us unique! During this time, teachers will also talk about what additional projects or materials will be available in the forest that day.

10:45: Forest Time and Projects

After morning snack and meeting, the children either return to our base camp forest to play, or continue hiking to another chosen spot. During the hours between Snack and Lunch, children have ample time to engage in dramatic play with their friends, collaborate on building projects, draw or write on their own or in groups, or explore with friends. Teachers also offer a variety of more structured projects or open-ended provocations, such as:

Learning to sew your own cloth face mask

Using vegetable peelers as carving tools

Using hatching and cross-hatching techniques to sketch a bird nest

Using guidebooks and the Seek app to identify leaves, berries, or mushrooms found in our Forest Classroom

Acting as a classroom reporter and writing short descriptions of what classmates are doing

Using magnifying glasses to look closely at a collection of mushrooms

Creating a survey and interviewing classmates

12:30: Lunch and Meeting

Lunch time sometimes includes a teacher read aloud, either from a picture book or a chapter book. A current favorite is Drumming and Dreaming: Algonquian Tales of the Eastern Woodland Native Americans, a collection of stories compiled by local Nipmuc author Larry Spotted Crow Mann.

Before the reading begins, children summarize the story so far, discuss the feelings and motivations of different characters, and make predictions about what will happen next.

Lunch time is also an opportunity to discuss big ideas.

Why do we vote? What does indigenous mean? What does the word ‘community’ mean? How do we solve problems when we disagree with each other? What do people need in order to have good lives? What helps you when you feel sad or angry or frustrated? What does Black Lives Matter mean? What do animals do in the winter? Why do people protest? What would life be like if you lived in the forest full-time?

1:15: Quiet Relax Time

Children pack their backpacks and place all materials that need to go home on top of their bin before heading to their own special 'hammock spot' in our Forest Classroom. Some children select a few books to peruse. Many bring along their personal ‘writing pouch’ (a zippered bag with supplies such as pens, pencils, notebooks and sketchbooks) to record their observations, write notes to friends, or create drawings to give to family members. Other children work on personal forts near their hammocks or build small fairy homes. The opportunity to slow down and perhaps feel some momentary boredom leads to creative inspiration, and we are often surprised by children's ingenuity during this time!

2:15: Afternoon Forest Time and Community Work

After Quiet Relax Time is a final 30 minute block in our beloved forest base camp. The changing weather provides new opportunities and experiences. Several intermittent streams appear after days of rain and then vanish overnight. Bark sloughing of slowly decomposing trees is harvested for construction projects. Blooming asters are collected as ‘fairy food’ or flower bouquets. As the seasons change, so does the landscape, and the children are always discovering something new!

During this time, groups of children also assist teachers with tasks such as refilling the water jugs for our hand washing station, sorting trash and recycling, and ensuring that shared materials such as stitching supplies, books, and carving tools are safely stored away for the night.

2:45: Afternoon Meeting and Tea Time

We end our days with a community meeting and afternoon tea. This is an opportunity for reflection, and the children recall highlights or share something that they noticed or wondered about during the day. Often, we use tea time to practice either Spanish or ASL. When children are offered tea, they might respond by saying, “Si, por favor” or “No, gracias” or “Poquito,” other days children use hand signs to communicate “yes, please” “no, thank you” or “more.”

Sometimes the class chooses to play a game called Would You Rather, where one person asks the question, Would you rather... (be famous or live a quiet life, have wings or octopus arms, eat pizza every day for the rest of your life or chocolate every day for the rest of your life, be an astronaut or an airplane pilot) and then calls on their classmates to explain which option they would choose. Another favorite game is Bigger Than a Breadbox, where one person secretly chooses an animal and classmates ask questions until someone is able to guess the animal. Other days, the children beg for one more story before it is time to leave!

3:15: Dismissal

Students collect their belongings and teachers use literacy-based clues to call children to line up. If you have the letter E in your name, you can line up. If your name rhymes with _____, you can line up. If your name has three vowels you can line up. If your name begins with the sound /t/ you can line up. The class walks together to the base of the upper parking lot to wait for caregivers to arrive. During this time many children are excited to see and catch up with their friends in the other K/1 class!