Denmark's Forest Kindergartens
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a concise look at the culture behind outdoor kindergartens in threads on parenting and education.
What it is
An SBS Dateline short documentary on Danish forest kindergartens, where children play freely outdoors, climb trees and use knives with little adult intervention.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Symbiote · 2017-12 · on “German Kindergarten Campouts Test Helicopter Parents (2015)”
They're also very popular in Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia. Description in English: [LINK] And a small documentary: [this video] An equally significant difference for me, coming from the UK, is that there are men working in childcare. My window overlooks a street where a lot of nursery and primary school groups walk past on their way to the park, and my guess is half the adults are men. I was 9 years old in England when I first had a male teacher.
Recommends Mashimo · 2018-02 · on “Achtung Baby by Sara Zaske, Reviewed”
Here is also a nice short (11 mins) documentary about a kindergarten in Denmark, also from CBS Dateline. [this video]
Recommends IMAYousaf · 2019-09 · on “Outdoor Preschools”
Hi everyone. This is a very concise (11:32) video that goes over some of the culture and thinking around outdoor kindergartens. I believe that it is quite informative: [this video] I believe that the best part about these schools is that early on they explicitly teach teamwork and understanding limits. It's quite shocking culturally seeing kids whittling with sharp knives and climbing rather precarious trees but it seems to work well.
Cites eesmith · 2021-06 · on “Her Lesson Plan Was Junk”
See also [LINK] on a similar yard in Wales. See [LINK] . This is more derived from the Lady Marjory Allen pedagogy (mentioned in the The Atlantic article as a distinct heritage from the kibbutz approach). She got the idea from the Dutch skrammellegepladsen - [LINK] . I recall watching a video from the mid-20th century about one of them, but can't find it. For a recent US/NYC example, [LINK] . For a more outdoors/forest approach in Denmark - [this video] . > "Who lets kids play with oleanders?" I do? I have no idea what an oleander is (beyond "plant"), so don't know why they are a problem. :)