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Right. A knife is a tool. For sharpening shanks.

I used to be scared of the knives for eating.

Yeeeeaaaah... this looks like more of a glorified daycamp than a kindergarten to me. My daughter is in a "traditional" bilingual kindergarten now and she's already learned her colors, shapes, letters, and numbers in both languages. They've just started learning to spell and do basic addition and subtraction. She also learned how to use the school computers to surf the Net--approved sites only of course, so don't expect her to be Sifting anything anytime soon! Oh, and she LOVES school. The "pedagogue" who says kids that young aren't ready to learn is full of shit. My daughter comes home from school wanting to practice counting and spelling every day.

I think I prefer that kind of education for her future than how to climb tall trees (though I guess that kind of skill might come in handy if we have a Walking Dead-style zombie apocalypse).

And no one formally checks on these kindergartens to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing? Fuck that. Sounds like pedophile paradise to me.

It's really sad you should feel that way. I understand what you are saying and in words that sound cool, however, at such a young age, most kids today don't even play outside anymore. Sure, you can argue that you can make them do it but that is much easier said than done. Young kids shouldn't be concerned with so much learning academically. They have plenty of years to do just that. Learning nature and how to be comfortable in nature for such young hearts and minds is essential to being a natural part of our planet. When your older, finding time to do this becomes more difficult. As the video says, after this experience, these children are ready to learn all the things you mentioned and they are happy, (didn't see signs of bullying either) and it helps makes them better people and probably healthier, mentally, emotionally, and physically. It's great about your daughter, however, balance is so important. Glorified day camp, pedophile paradise, so much judgment. It's Denmark's way of thinking that makes them the happiest country

@Gratefulmom

Hey, if parents want to send their kids to a completely unregulated daycare where the "education" is having kids swing sticks around in the rain and -20 degree weather, that's their choice (though it sounds to me more like ancient Sparta than a modern Kindergarten).

As for me, on the other hand, I prefer my daughter get the scientifically proven lifelong benefits of a proper preschool education. See this book for an example of the scientific evidence I'm talking about.

All the science I've seen on kids playing outdoors (including that on outdoor kindergartens: see for example this article) shows that around 1-2 hours a day outside is enough to see significant results. My daughter gets at least that much in the park after kindergarten most days when the weather is nice, so I'm not so worried about her development.

Are we forgetting these kids are 4 or 5 and are supposed to play like this? Well, I guess we must agree to disagree, to each their own.

@Gratefulmom

People who disagree with science generally don't come out so well in the end--see anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, etc. I'd change my mind about these kindergartens if there were solid science behind them.

And if you look into it, you'll see there is very little good science to support this style of kindergarten (i.e. the sample sizes are small, no case studies or longitudinal studies, studies rely heavily on self-reporting of either parents and children, etc.) whereas there is a lot of well done research that shows the lifelong benefits of "traditional" pre-schooling (i.e. longitudinal studies that show demonstrable effects even after controlling for external factors).

I would love to see a well thought out longitudinal study that compares how the outdoor kindergarteners fair against those from traditional classrooms but unfortunately the only research I could find compared the outdoor kids to kids who had never been to kindergarten at all.

And of course comparing kids who went to any sort of kindergarten to kids who haven't is going to favor the kindergarten kids if you're looking at things like social skills, ability to take direction from adults, etc. (which is exactly what the studies done on the outdoor kindergartens do).

So it's not about disagreeing with you so much as it is not finding any evidence that this style of pre-school is better than going to a traditional preschool that includes a healthy amount of outdoor playtime (at least 1 to 2 hours a day if not more).

I'm not sure why it has to be an either/or kind of thing. I went to preschool where we learned letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and some Spanish. After school every day (unless it was raining, and even then sometimes), I played outside climbing trees, catching bugs, and playing in mud. Neither interfered with the other.

There are some schools like this in Germany as well. Usually children that have issues like attention deficit disorder or do not fit into a normal school (problem child) will attend to such a "Forest school" (Waldschule). There are studies that it benefits development as the change in scenery from the busy city life helps the children adjust. It is definitely not very common and children still need to attend regular classes.

To say it has a flair of "anti science" is a bit far fetched as these schools often teach a lot about the local flora and fauna, do stuff like looking at water samples under a microscope or take earth probes. Sure it is not super scientific, it probably compares to what most kids would do as boy scouts - except it's part of the school's education program. For some kids this approach is better at fueling their scientific curiosity than in a regular school environment where they have many other issues to deal with.

This is all because you don't trust people, because of the society you're in.