Even though it was chilly outside, everyone's spirit was warm and ready to explore Friday morning at drop off. The day started with some of our foresters turning into robots and coloring and some went straight to the mud kitchen and made some delicious cakes, muffins, and pancakes topped with lovely fall foliage. Once our pictures had been colored by our robots and baked goods were in the oven, we opened with our morning meeting.  We shared things that we had done during the week or things we were looking forward to as well as discussed our plan for the day. Next we geared up with our snacks, lunches, water bottles, mugs, and handy new Kelly Kettle, and headed out towards forest camp! [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"9706","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone wp-image-1158 aligncenter","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"500","height":"375","alt":"img_3744"}}]] Once at forest camp we sat around our beautifully constructed fire circle and ate snack as Victoria read us a story about a tree's life and all the animals that use it. It was so interesting to hear everything that trees give to every animal in nature. After our bellies were full and we got all the energy from our snacks we explored Forest camp.  Some of us went straight to the shelter in the middle of camp and started to work on it, getting dirty, as always.  Others went off into the woods to collect some Chickadee perch- and mouse tail-sized twigs for our Kelly Kettle fire. Some, while searching for wood, got distracted and decided to help out the trees and make their leaves rain down on us.  Fall is officially here! While exploring, we always seem to stumble upon some critters in the path.  We made friends with yet another salamander that was hiding in our fire pit trying to get ready to bury itself for winter.  We didn't like it being in our fire pit, so we gently brought it to a safer location in Forest camp. We also made a more fuzzy friend, a Woolly Bear caterpillar! We gently passed it around to those who wanted to have it crawl in their hands, and then brought it back to the place we found it. Last week  we all drew beautiful pictures to thank our trees at forest camp and today at camp some of us hung them up on the trees to decorate.  We hope to decorate Forest Camp more as the weeks past by with crafts and personal gifts. Seeing as it is now officially fall, it is getting chilly outside.  After spending some time in the woods we were getting chilly, good thing we have our portable Kelly Kettle to heat up some water to make tea!  Some of us helped Debbie keep the fire going by placing twigs in our fire when needed.  We made some spruce tea with branches from nearby Spruce Trees and sweetened it with a little Maple Syrup from our sugar house! [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"9731","attributes":{"class":"media-image alignnone size-full wp-image-1163","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"2304","height":"1728","alt":"img_3774"}}]] After we played and explored a little more, we decided it was time for a hike.  We took our lunches and headed out on a exploration to Lookout Rock!  We traveled far and high to get to this amazing view.  Up there we sat on a lovely rock and enjoyed listening to the birds and the autumn leaves rustle in the wind. Half way through lunch we had our Thank you circle up on Lookout Rock.  We were thankful for a lot of different things, like the trees, maple syrup and much more. We can not wait for more Forest Preschool on Friday.  More adventures will come along with more decoration and exploring Forest camp as well!