{"id":331,"date":"2016-09-16T08:47:24","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T08:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taughtbyfinland.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2022-05-16T18:54:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T18:54:23","slug":"finnish-kindergarten-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taughtbyfinland.com\/finnish-kindergarten-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Finnish Kindergarten in the Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Note: My new online course, “The Finnish Education Insider” is open for enrollment! The first 50 students get more than 50%-off the regular price. Sign up here<\/strong>!<\/a> \ud83d\ude4c]<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the brook! To the brook!\u201d the three girls chanted in Finnish as they skipped through the forest. Within a few minutes, the other kindergartners had joined them in the fern-covered gully. As their teacher Kaija Pelo and I stood on a hill observing the children at play below us, two boys in baseball caps poked sticks into the brook (Pelo said they were \u201cfishing\u201d) while other children teetered across a fallen pine tree, which served as a natural bridge over the running water. Most kindergartners, though, appeared to be doing nothing except wandering along the length of the brook.<\/p>\n

For these 5- and 6-year-olds, this forest is their kindergarten classroom\u2014nearly 80 percent of the time.<\/p>\n

Four days a week, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (Finland\u2019s required amount of daily kindergarten instruction), this group of 14 children is outside with their veteran teacher and two classroom aides. In Finland, this is not a typical kindergarten setting (only a handful of forest kindergartens exist in this Nordic country), but in Europe, such places have been popular for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, Timmy!\u201d called Eeni, a tiny girl, who waved me to follow her and her two friends down into the gully. These children had climbed up just to invite me on a tour of their classroom. I followed them.<\/p>\n

After leaping over the brook, the three girls led me to the uprooted end of the fallen pine tree, where a geocache container\u2014a rare sign of civilization in this section of the woods\u2014had been stored below it. Afterward, we hiked up a hill, keeping the brook as our line, until we reached a (relatively) flat area where small pools had formed. I imagined that these three children could have stayed there for at least an hour, constructing and deconstructing dams, but they were eager to show me the next stop on the tour: a large ditch.<\/p>\n

Their teacher, who was following me, led the children in counting as they all jumped into the hole in the ground. \u201cOne, two, three, four!\u201d they counted in Finnish. (For good measure, I jumped into the ditch, too.) The teacher, Pelo, explained that this experience represented how she and the two aides aspire to teach the kindergartners in the woods. She described this approach as \u201csecret\u201d learning, when children are unaware that they\u2019re learning academic content. In the forest, these Finnish educators might lead the children to find sticks of varying lengths and organize them from shortest to longest, form letters out of natural materials, or count mushrooms.<\/p>\n

This publically funded forest kindergarten launched several weeks ago, so regular routines are still being developed, but I was curious to hear about its daily schedule. Pelo told me that it largely depends on the day, because they provide the children with a lot of leeway to pursue their own interests, which means that they hold their own teaching plans loosely. Typically, the children have two hours of daily free play in the woods. They set aside time for lunch. Even though the children lack access to toys and electronics, they\u2019ve never reported that they\u2019re bored in the forest, according to Pelo. \u201cBut when the winter comes,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019ll see.\u201d (Like other forest kindergartens in Europe, this group plans to meet outside rain or shine, even when the temperature plummets.)<\/p>\n

Throughout my visit, I kept searching for the \u201cbored student,\u201d and after one hour, I thought I finally found him. Reclining against the base of a tree, I spotted a tall blonde boy with a glazed look in his eyes. He simply stared at the brook, listening to its constant gurgling. Then after a few minutes, he pulled himself up and crossed to the other side of the water. The boy wasn\u2019t bored, I corrected myself. He was simply resting.<\/p>\n

One of the most predictable parts of this kindergarten\u2019s day is the morning ritual they perform, after hiking about a hundred yards from Western Puijo Preschool in the city of Kuopio. Once the children lay their matching, crimson-colored backpacks around the trunk of a pine tree, the class forms a circle and students greet each other by chanting, syllable by syllable, each person\u2019s name\u2014\u201cJu-ho! Lau-ri! I-lo-na!\u201d Then Pelo reviews the days of the week with a fun song (there\u2019s a different movement for each day), and asks the children to determine the correct date. It was a routine I\u2019d expect to find, in some form or other, in typical kindergarten classrooms in Finland and the United States. But witnessing that morning ritual, in the context of the forest, got me to wonder: Is there something about being outside that\u2019s especially beneficial for kids?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0strongly suggests that time in nature can help many children learn to build confidence in themselves; reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, calm children, and help them focus,\u201d Richard Louv, the author of\u00a0Last Child in the Woods<\/em>\u00a0and co-founder of the\u00a0Children and Nature Network<\/a>, said in an email. \u201cThere are some indications that natural play spaces can reduce bullying. It can also be a buffer to child obesity and overweight, and offers other psychological and physical health benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Improved cognitive functioning, Louv added, has been associated with nature-based learning for years. For a recent example, he pointed to\u00a0a 6-year study<\/a>\u00a0involving more than 900 public elementary schools in Massachusetts, in which researchers found a link \u201cbetween the greenness of the school in the spring (when most Massachusetts students take the [state-wide] tests) and school-wide performance on both English and Math tests, even after adjustment for socioeconomic factors and urban residency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time spent in nature, according to Louv, is \u201cobviously not a cure-all\u201d for children, however, he suggested to me that something like a forest kindergarten could \u201cbe an enormous help, especially for kids who are stressed by circumstances beyond their control.\u201d<\/p>\n

After observing the Finnish forest kindergarten for an hour and a half, I knew I had seen something magical, but I couldn\u2019t help but think that this sort of arrangement was so far from being realized in most American kindergartens, where\u00a0play-based learning has significantly decreased<\/a>, and young children typically spend many hours inside one cinderblock classroom, on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Still, I wanted to know: What would it look like to bring the forest kindergarten concept to a public-school setting in America, where unlike Finland, such things as standards and benchmarks exist?<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2013, Eliza Minnucci was teaching kindergarten at the Ottauquechee School in Quechee, Vermont, when her principal invited the staff to watch a documentary called\u00a0School\u2019s Out<\/a><\/em>\u00a0about a forest kindergarten in Switzerland\u2014similar to the one I visited in Finland. At the conclusion of the film, Minnucci blurted out, \u201cI\u2019d do that in a heartbeat!\u201d Those words caught the attention of her principal.<\/p>\n

A few days later, Minnucci met with her principal and he pitched the idea of beginning an initiative called \u201cForest Friday,\u201d where she would take her kindergartners into the woods, for an entire day once a week. Minnucci loved the plan, and she teamed up with a former student-teacher of hers, Meghan Teachout, who shared her enthusiasm for forest kindergartens. Later, Teachout received a grant to visit weekly as the paid \u201cforest teacher,\u201d and in the fall of 2013, they launched Forest Friday.<\/p>\n

Since then, Minnucci and Teachout\u2019s efforts may have sparked a small movement among New England educators. Recently, over a dozen nearby schools have implemented something similar to Forest Friday, according to Minnucci. Through Antioch University New England\u2019s department of education, Minnucci and Teachout teach a year-long course for 20 teachers on the subject of nature-based education. Also, Minnucci and Teachout\u2014who both have young children\u2014work as paid forest teachers at the Ottauquechee School, assisting two kindergarten classrooms to keep a forest day once each week. (They maintain a website, too, called\u00a0ForestKinder<\/a>, where they\u2019re regularly contacted by teachers around the world who seek advice in launching similar initiatives.)<\/p>\n

On a forest day at the Ottauquechee School, the kindergarten teacher and the forest teacher start inside with the kindergartners. Usually, there\u2019s a \u201cfocusing question\u201d on the board, such as \u201cWhat do we get that comes from trees?\u201d and a few minutes for students to journal about what they want to do in the woods. Before heading outside, the teachers and children discuss what they should wear in the forest, based on that day\u2019s weather, and then they all get dressed together.<\/p>\n

Once they complete the short hike to their forest classroom, the children visit their \u201csit spots,\u201d where they\u2019ll remain for five to 15 minutes in relative solitude, carefully observing their slice of the woods. During this time, the kindergartners sometimes make \u201cfairy houses\u201d or use sticks to drum quietly. Afterward, the teachers call the children together, where they predict the temperature, based on their senses. Then the kindergartners engage in about an hour of free play. Both Minnucci and Teachout lauded the benefits of this unstructured time, in which the kindergartners are often building, problem-solving, and doing a lot of physical activity as they develop their fine and gross motor skills.<\/p>\n

After a hearty snack (usually \u201cdense muffins,\u201d said Minnucci) the children split up into two groups for learning stations in the woods. The classroom teacher leads the kindergartners in one activity, such as a math lesson on tools of measurement, while the other teacher facilitates something different (forming letters out of sticks, for example). One guiding philosophy for this session, in the words of Teachout, is for teachers to take what they\u2019re doing inside outside.<\/p>\n

After these teacher-directed stations, it\u2019s lunchtime. During the free-play block, the teachers\u2014or parent volunteers who assist them\u2014would have prepared a small meal over a fire, such as stew, pancakes, or \u201cstick-bread,\u201d which is as simple as baked dough wrapped around a piece of wood. (These hot dishes supplement the children\u2019s lunches, which they\u2019ve brought into the forest.) Before cleaning up and dousing the fire with water, the children have a few more precious minutes of free play. Then they all hike back to school.<\/p>\n

Something like Forest Friday makes a big difference to some kids, according to Minnucci. Once, she had a boy in her classroom who had a \u201chard time in preschool,\u201d and during the first few days of kindergarten, whenever he\u2019d catch himself daydreaming, he\u2019d push himself to make intense eye contact with her\u2014a strategy his preschool teacher had taught him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe already knew he didn\u2019t fit the mold,\u201d Minnucci told me, but when they started their Forest Friday routine, \u201che did so well outside.\u201d He began to love kindergarten, and his confidence surged; the forest had given him a place where he could succeed. He became so enthusiastic about school that the night before Forest Friday, his mother reported to Minnucci, he\u2019d lay out all of his clothes.<\/p>\n

What are the ingredients for implementing something like Forest Friday? Teachout provided me with a list for teachers, which Minnucci later approved: the blessing of an administrator; collaborators (other teachers and supportive parents, for example); and a wild place, which is ideally within walking distance. That mindset of starting small is also important, Minnucci said.<\/p>\n

When I asked Louv what he would suggest to American teachers, he offered\u00a0several ideas<\/a>, some of which appeared in his newest book\u00a0Vitamin N<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(a collection of 500 nature-based activities): create a sensory garden, take students outside for a half-hour to journal about their experiences in the wild, host a scavenger hunt, or encourage independent reading outside, for example.<\/p>\n

Recently, Louv visited\u00a0an elementary school<\/a>\u00a0in Georgia, where students usually spend one-third of their day outside. He noted that this charter school, in which most students come from low-income families, has shown more academic improvement than any other school in its county. In standardized reading tests, last year\u2019s third graders outperformed the national average by 17 points and the regional average by 26 points.<\/p>\n

Louv gives credit to brave educators, like Minnucci and Teachout, who are finding creative ways to take students into the wild, despite the hurdles of \u201cdistrict bureaucracies and fear of litigation.\u201d But, of course, getting American children to connect regularly with nature is not the sole responsibility of educators and schools. \u201cParents, policy makers, and whole communities must pitch in,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

In his 2005 book\u00a0Last Child in the Woods<\/em>, Louv introduced the (now) popular term, \u201cnature-deficit disorder,\u201d to highlight the increasing gap between children and nature. These days, Louv is encouraged that the awareness of children\u2019s need for more nature has significantly increased over the last decade, but he believes it\u2019s imperative to move more rapidly into \u201caction mode,\u201d something he calls \u201cthe new nature movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Tim Walker is an American teacher, writer, and speaker. He is the best-selling author of Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms<\/a>. Tim has written extensively about his experiences for\u00a0Educational Leadership, Education Week Teacher, and\u00a0The Atlantic. Inspired by his work in Finnish schools, he speaks internationally about play, trust, and joy in education.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tim blogs about global educational practices at\u00a0teachlands.com<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Join the mailing list\u00a0here<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0follow\u00a0Teachlands on\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a9, 2016, Timothy D. Walker, as first published in\u00a0The Atlantic. Thanks for reading and sharing!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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