In US, Outdoor Classes Let Students Connect With Nature
Vashon Island: When they’re outside, the children in Erin Kenny’s class don’t head for cover if it rains or snows. They stay right where they are — in a private five-acre forest. It’s their classroom.
They spend three hours a day, four days a week here, a free-flowing romp through cedar and Douglas fir on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.
The unique “forest kindergarten” at Cedarsong Nature School is among several that have opened in recent years in the US, part of a movement that originated in Europe to get kids away from televisions and into the natural world.
“American children do not spend much time outdoors anymore,” Kenny says. “There’s a growing need and an awareness on parents’ part that their children really need to do more connecting with nature.”
In addition to Kenny’s, at least two other schools have been established: one in Portland, Oregon, and another in Carbondale, Colorado.
Cedarsong, near Seattle, is basically a camp. It has three cabins, one being a library, another for equipment and the last one for a compost bathroom equipped with child seats (although sometimes the kids prefer to just urinate in selected spots in the forest).
The kids munch on what the forest provides, calling leaf buds “forest candy.” For Kenny, the preschool is a culmination of years of working with children and a love for the outdoors. She used to be a lawyer, but was inspired to start her school after reading Richard Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods.”
In the book, Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” to explain a lack of connection between the country’s children and nature.
At such a young age, Kenny says, children shouldn’t be taught complicated subjects. They shouldn’t be force fed math or language. As time goes by, Kenny says, there will be more evidence that these schools are appropriate models for children. AP



FOREST KINDERGARTEN: The Cedarsong preschool, near Seattle. Students at the three-hour-a-day school spend their entire time outside in nature