Forest Kids

Forest Kids
ing that trend because children in the outdoors often can’t resist
chasing and racing and tackling the challenges of slopes, rocks,
stumps and open spaces.
As Norwegian expert Ingunn Fjortoft puts it, “The vegetation
provides shelters and trees for climbing. The meadows are for running
and tumbling.”
In a frequently cited 2001 study, the early childhood specialist
compared children who played one to two hours a day in a forest
kindergarten setting with kids playing the same amount of time
in traditional playgrounds. Over a nine-month period, the forest
group improved significantly more on a range of tests for balance,
speed of limb movement, flexibility in knees and thighs, standing
jumps, arm and shoulder strength, beam walking, running agility,
speed and cross-co-ordination.
Erin Van Stone with her students (Diana Nethercott for the Toronto Star)
This wouldn’t be news to Sangster Elementary’s Erin Van Stone,
who watches the 5-year-olds in Nature Kindergarten take turns
shimmying across a suspended tree trunk.
When they first started coming to this site 10 days earlier, the
children treated it “like a danger zone,” she says. “But they mas-
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