One of the challenges (and joys) of teaching Forest School has been creating curriculum on the fly (no pun intended) to match the weather. Two weeks ago, I had planned to have the Herons sketch the square foot patches they had chosen last fall – the popsicle stick markers were newly emerged from the melted snow…then we got two inches of snow between one and four in the morning, scratching that plan. Last week, luckily, I had a good twenty four hours notice that it was going to be very windy.
On Wednesday morning, we learned about the Beaufort scale, made a simple tool to determine wind direction and learned how to read and create wind barbs. The one concession I made was to start this work indoors so that the paper plates and streamers we were using to make our tools didn't get blown to Farmington.
Once outside, the Herons did a fantastic job of measuring and recording the wind speed and direction. They read a complex wind prediction chart from the National Weather Service and they hypothesized about the variety of readings they got.
A popular option for woods craft was to use the tarps to capture the wind. One group hooked their tarp up to a sled and then worked on ways to keep the tarp open to catch the wind. They were very sorry that we didn't still have the ice rink to try their wind sled on. I filmed this in slow motion…upon retrospect, it would have been much more exciting in real time.
The Rookery 
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