Forest Kids

3 ‘You Don’t Have to Have a Forest’
In Germany, they call it waldkindergarten. There are long wait lists
for these woodland kindergartens for children aged 3 to 6, which
can be found in the parks of Berlin and other cities as well as in
rural forests.
Norwegians use the term friluftsliv, or “open-air living,” to
describe this approach to outdoor learning. It’s known as “bush
kindy” in Australia and New Zealand, where the phenomenon is
newer. The British call them forest schools.
Here, in the land of blue lakes, rocky shores and pine forests,
we don’t have enough of them yet to worry about a name. But in
pockets across the country, the seeds are starting to sprout. The big
question is whether Canada will prove to be fertile ground.
No matter where you start a conversation about teaching kids
in the woods, odds are the trail will lead to the village of Carp
outside Ottawa, where a determined young social worker named
Marlene Power is on the front lines of this experiment.
Power, 31, grew up combing the shores of her native Newfoundland,
making mud pies and popping sap bubbles in the woods. Two
decades later, she was working at a Quebec daycare and aghast at
how little time the children spent outdoors. She wanted something
different for her own daughter and set about creating it. But instead
of looking for a church basement somewhere, she followed
Thoreau and went to the woods.
When she launched Carp Ridge Forest Preschool & Kindergarten
as a small, private pilot in 2008, no one had a clue what it was
all about. Outdoor learning in winter? In a climate where January
snow banks are taller than children? Power traversed the region,
taking her pitch to cafés, community centres and schools, explaining
to “anyone who would listen.”
17