From garden kindergarten to forest kindergarten

For Forest Kindergartners, Class Is Back to Nature, Rain or Shine

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Pupils ages 3 ½ to 6 at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in a flooded woodland behind their schoolhouse. Three hours each day are spent outdoors. More Photos >


By LIZ LEYDEN
Published: November 29, 2009
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — 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.
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Forest Kindergarten
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Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Story time. The “classroom” is state parkland called the Hemlock Trail and an empty farmhouse. More Photos »
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.
Schools around the country have been planting gardens and planning ever more elaborate field trips in hopes of reconnecting children with nature. The forest kindergarten at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs is one of a handful in the United States that are taking that concept to another level: its 23 pupils, ages 3 ½ to 6, spend three hours each day outside regardless of the weather. This in a place where winter is marked by snowdrifts and temperatures that regularly dip below freezing.
The new forest kindergarten, which opened here in September, is an extreme version of the outdoor learning taught at more than 100 Waldorf schools, all but a handful of them private, scattered throughout the United States. They are based on the teachings of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner and emphasize the arts and the natural world, with no formal academic curriculum until first grade.
“I loved the idea of her being outside every day,” said Kim Lytle, whose 3-year-old, aptly named Forest, is the youngest in the class. “If you have the proper gear, I think it’s a really healthy thing to experience the elements and brave the world — and not just on a sunny day.”
The children’s “classroom” is 325 acres of state parkland known as the Hemlock Trail, and a long-empty farmhouse, which the state has licensed Waldorf to use for the year. The school also has regular indoor classes at its main building.
On this day in the fledgling program, whose tuition is about $7,000, the rain did not taper off, yet the kindergartners remained outside until lunch. Circle time — songs and dancing — took place in the center of a field, behind a farmhouse, followed by a snack of apples and pineapple chunks at picnic tables. The children cut bittersweet vine to make wreaths, splashed in puddles, and, in the sandbox, did some imaginary cooking.
“We’re making something that’s cheesy,” said one girl.
“It’s cookies,” said a boy.
Max Perez, nearly 5, carried a bucket to the swampy edges of the field and scooped up some water. He and the others mixed the sand into gobs of glorious mud. After an hour, Max paused, peering out from his wet hat, and asked, “Is it raining today?”
In some ways, the program is not unlike other kindergartens. Signs declaring a peanut-free zone are taped throughout the farmhouse. There are bruised feelings and scuffles and potty jokes. But the biggest challenge is one not found in traditional classrooms: ticks, lots of them.
Though virtually unknown in the United States, forest kindergartens are increasingly common in Scandinavia and other European countries like Germany and Austria.
Sigrid D’Aleo and Carly Lynn, two Waldorf teachers, proposed adding one in Saratoga Springs because, over the years, they had seen students at their best when outdoors.
“Their large motor skills developed, they worked out their social issues in a better way, they had more imaginative play,” Ms. D’Aleo said. “Children’s senses are so overtaxed in these modern times, so here, it is very healthy for them.”
Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods,” a book arguing that children have suffered from diminished time outside, said he had heard similar things from educators around the country.
“It helps us use all our senses at the same time,” he said. “It seems to be the optimum state of learning, when everything is coming at us in lots of different ways.”
Alane Chinian, regional director of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said of the Waldorf school’s use of the Hemlock Trail: “We are delighted to have them there. It expands our mission and furthers the park’s goals of providing nature education to children.”
Here in Saratoga Springs, the children crossed into the forest at midmorning, greeted by the rich smell of earth and leaves. A fallen branch had created an arch to climb through as if they were entering a hidden place straight out of a storybook.
Trails had been worn through the thickets. An old stone wall ran through the center of the trees toward huge tepees the children had built from sticks and vines.
Everywhere, there were things to discover. A branch balanced on a split tree trunk became a seesaw. A teacher sawed thick stumps into logs the children used to bridge bogs. A pit became a monster house, complete with boys standing in the rain shouting warnings: “You don’t want to come over here! You’ll get smushed!”
Piper Whalen, 5, turned toward her own treasure: an enormous fallen tree. She climbed on and lifted her arms. “I’m riding a roller coaster,” she said. “Come on and ride with me.”
The raindrops continued to fall until, finally, it poured, hard enough to splash though the canopy of trees. The children were delighted.
“It’s wet!” exclaimed one.
“My hair is getting a drink of water!” another said.
Piper began to laugh. She stuck out her tongue and turned her face toward the sky.

Teaching without Walls

Vermont 2009. Mud oven, built by 16 children, 8-9 years old in 2 days. It withstands 950 degree heat and bakes 100 pizzas in 3 hours.

Cost- almost nothing.

Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included...something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. Its a gigantic project.

Joseph Beuys 1921-1986

I wish that man could live in homes as marvelous and beautiful as that of the snail and that he could build cities as endlessly rewarding as a forest.

-James Hubbell, sculptor, builder

The few moments when a child feels awake to the world, when she is learning and discovering that which quickens and enlivens the very core of her being for life, are connected to two powerful, different forces.One of these forces resides within the mystery of nature. The other lives and changes in the mystery of the human soul landscape.

To build a playground, a stage, a canvas, a poem where the human being can embark upon a fruitful quest for this discovery, we need the thoughts of Hubble and Beuys to establish two important principles.Our longing in this time of macro transformation - energy- money- waste- carbon- food- learning-working-transportation-consumer debt- the list goes on and on- is to start over and live with dignity and integrity. I would also add, with beauty. A new aesthetic has yet to be founded that re-casts the feared and regretted, rebelled and rejected notions of beauty which lived a life of suffering in our past eras.

Hubbel's life long work of sculpted buildings; homes, businesses and schools, works out a new aesthetic seeded in Gaudi's organic patterning of water, earth and plant movements. Beuys used staged urban events to point out the need for extreme social change, an awakening to spirit in matter.

When children and other ordinary people get a chance to use their hands, feet and senses engaging in a deep mindful and playful dialogue with the four elements, new structures for life appear which can seed the intelligence the world is waiting for.

It is indeed a joyful, musical, playful, humorous day when we work with skilled craftsmen and women to create the shelters we need to learn, work,cook, eat, play and sleep in out of natural materials that even cost less than what we already use.

My father, a civil engineer who builds bridges, tells me these days there are two sources of strength when you build bridges. One is tensile strength. The other is compressive strength.

I like to think about this. I am a teacher and in a way I build bridges. From the mind to the heart and back again. Passion for learning is everything.

With tensile strength, we knead with our feet delicate golden wheat or barley straw in the mud so the adobe does not crack when it freezes.

In childhood, we learn to be flexible through endless disappointment. The golden straw of our childish hope that it will go better next time keeps us upright and lovable as children. Our tensile strength, our ability to adapt to the climate and mood changes of adults around us is endless.

The adult with a bit of luck gradually acquires or learns compressive strength. The world begins to bear down upon us and we withstand its pressure. The world will not crush us entirely, this is our small hope. Our resolve to push back, create balance, do better, do more, do well, do it somehow, is endless. Cracks appear and the golden tensile strength of our offspring or our glimpses of other's encourages us to keep going. The question of a bridge between these two sources of strength is a question of education. What does a perfect school look like? When does school begin? When does it end? In a life, in a day? A year? When is enough enough? When is it poison? What is it for? Is it worth it?

Can we re-work our notion of schools and after care, work and home to include a new way of living that asks more of the children, of us all? More time, more love of the earth, of each other, more discovery, more ways to learn how to do basic things like grow food, cook it, build and discover how things work from a new reliance on trial and error?

Imagine a revolution for after school care. What if the after school care programs were the most important part of the day instead of the garbage heap of quality learning time for children.?
Imagine children dealing with the reality of a fire to be built up, a cow that had to be milked, pizza dough kneaded and dinner cooked and ready for the tired parents who came to collect everyone at 6 pm?

Simple things with big impact on the senses and skills of a child can change how a child sleeps, how a child learns, how a child retains what she has learned for life. How she applies it to other situations in an intelligent and creative way.

In the end, a life is poetry. It is a dance, a song. A creation like the Finnish Kalevala song of creation. Only it is now the creation song of our new lives ready to be sown.