Forest Kids

Forest Kids
outdoor lesson plans aligned to the curriculum to help teachers
take Grades 4 through 6 classes outside. Guides for kindergarten
through Grade 3 and middle school will come out later this year.
The Back to Nature Network also co-ordinated a guide for
teaching in nearby nature.
By spring, however, the Suzuki group realized material wasn’t
enough. Teachers needed to be taught how to use it. So in April,
they held a two-day seminar for about two dozen of them from
GTA boards.
If you talk about forest kindergarten long enough, the issue of
demographics is inevitably raised, however gingerly. Skeptics note
the idea is largely driven by an educated, middle- and upper-middle-class
cohort whose kids go to schools where they don’t have to
worry about finding syringes or condoms. Many grew up going to
cottages and on ski trips, so are naturally inclined. It’s part of their
history and lifestyle.
Belfountain Public School northwest of Toronto, for example,
is a widely touted model of environmental and outdoor education,
where kids spend plenty of time in the gardens and woods. But
the surrounding community has common ideals and resources to
draw on and faces few of the challenges of the inner city.
The disparity is noted by Mark Lasso, principal of Roden Public
School and Equinox Holistic Alternative School, which are on the
same Toronto site.
Lasso enthuses about the Equinox outdoor kindergarten and
the school’s focus on “experiential” learning in all grades. Older
kids at Equinox are regularly in the ravines with nature educators
from the PINE Project, based in High Park. He’s seen notably fewer
behavioural problems among the students, who get more outdoor
time than those at other schools.
But at his first open house as principal last fall, he noticed a
stark difference between the two student bodies. The Equinox
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