Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Kindergarten Outdoors, Rain or Shine

Stories like this, of an outdoor kindergarten near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., always make me smile:

Fat, cold droplets splashed from the sky as the students struggled into their uniforms: rain pants, boots, mittens and hats. Once buttoned and bundled, they scattered toward favorite spaces: a crab apple tree made for climbing, a cluster of bushes forming a secret nook under a willow tree, a sandbox growing muddier by the minute.

They planted garlic bulbs, discovered a worm. The rain continued to fall. It was 8:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, and the Waldorf School’s “forest kindergarten” was officially in session.

Forest kindergartens, outdoor nurseries, nature schools… whatever you call them, they’ve been around a long time, and they’re really quite common in much of the world. In fact, Kindergarten itself has its roots in Friedrich Fröbel’s original kindergarten – or “children’s garden” – which was conducted outdoors, amongst nature.

As Richard Louv’s message of “nature deficit” childhoods becomes a more engrained part of our cultural knowledge, and as we begin to see the effects of the over-standardization of education, I think (and hope) we’ll see many more programs like this take root.

Nov 30, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Over-Prepared for Kindergarten

Jacqueline Stenson, writing for MSNBC:

Long gone are the days when parents signed their kids up for kindergarten based on whether their birthdays met the school’s cut-off, and youngsters simply showed up on the first day, where they played, snacked and napped. Perhaps they had attended preschool, but if they did, they almost certainly didn’t have any summer tutoring to make sure they really were ready for kindergarten.

Today, many children go to two or three years of preschool and some stay on for another year of pre-K. Like Rubesch, some parents have begun signing their kids up for summer classes or one-on-one tutoring to improve their reading, math, writing and overall “kindergarten readiness.”

There’s a lot of ground covered in Stenson’s article, from an examination of the more societal-based trends of academic acceleration and attempts at educational reforms, to parenting paradigms and the contemporary question many parents are asking, of “How much preparation is too much?” Most of the issues at hand are well addressed in the Alliance for Childhood’s report from earlier this year, “Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School.”

I’m glad to see this as part of MSNBC’s “back to school” coverage, though. It takes time, but slowly we can see that many more modern families are, if not finding the right answers, at least asking the right questions.

Aug 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #