Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools, 2nd edition by Claire Warden

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 23(2), 2013 Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools, 2nd edition Claire Warden (2012). Perthshire, Scotland: Mindstretchers, Ltd., 144 pages. $32.50 as an e-book from www.childcareexchange.com; £29 from www.mindstretchers.co.uk. ISBN 978-1-906116-09-5. The current nature-based early childhood movement has at least two separate rootstalks. The Nature Preschool rootstalk emerged out of the environmental movement in the United States with programs developed at environmental centers as early as 1967. On a parallel course, Rain or Shine Schools emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in Scandinavia. As this impulse spread, the schools have become broadly identified as Forest Kindergartens. Like wind-dispersed milkweed seeds, the movement has drifted quietly from Scandinavia to Europe to the British Isles and has recently swept to Asia. There are now more than 1000 Waldkindergartens (forest kindergartens) in Germany and hundreds throughout the United Kingdom. One of the leaders of the movement in the UK is Claire Warden, who has developed two programs for young children in Scotland and helped spawn other preschool and elementary initiatives in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Warden also provides professional development for like-minded educators from around the world; many Americans are hopping across the pond to take advantage of her trainings. Her book Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools compellingly captures both the core theoretical principles and the vivid daily practices of this approach to early childhood education. This book is sure to become a core text in the naturebased early childhood teacher education program we have initiated at Antioch University New England. First, this is a beautiful—dare I say, almost coffee table-worthy—book. A sprig of ivy graces the beginning of each chapter, the pages themselves have a handmade paper background, and there are hundreds of well-chosen illustrative photographs of children immersed in the natural world. The casual reader gets a clear understanding of the message of the book just from scanning the photographs of children wind-dancing on the beach, shucking peas, huddled up inside wooden stumps, peering intently at toads, and in the night-dark woods. The images alone make you long for your long-lost nature-bound childhood. (Or they convince you to provide this kind of nature saturation for your own students, children or grandchildren.) In the early chapters, Warden effectively identifies the unique features of this approach, enumerates the academic, psychological and health benefits quantified through research, and places the nature-based early childhood movement within© 2013 Children, Youth and Environments Book Review: Nature Kindergartens and Forest Schools 212 the context of other European progressive education impulses of the last two-anda -half centuries. The current movement owes much to Frederick Froebel, the German educator who created the first Kindergartens (German for “children’s gardens”) in the early 19th century. Froebel’s background as both a forester and an educator shaped his conviction that the forest should be an essential element of early education. The book also makes it clear that the current movement also draws inspiration from Pestalozzi, Montessori, and more recently from the pedagogistas of Reggio Emilia schools. It is this Reggio Emilia emphasis on artistic expressions of children’s thinking and the attention to careful documentation of emergent curriculum that brings a unique character to the book. Warden has devised an innovative methodology: creating Talking and Thinking Floorbooks. These are large-format books, made to be looked at on the floor or ground, which capture children’s thinking and problem-solving through drawings, children’s descriptions transcribed by teachers, photographs and teacher reflections. These Floorbooks are worked on daily, and reviewing them at the beginning of each day reminds children where they have been (literally and figuratively) and where they might want to go. This careful documentation (à la Reggio Emilia) becomes the basis for the hands-on, nitty-gritty case studies in each chapter. Because these ethnographically capture children’s play and wonderings, they provide portraits of one-of-a-kind moments. “Frozen Bandages” describes a group of 5-year-olds making frozen “plasters” out of sandy mud to fix their sore fingers. “Pheasant Death” describes the series of activities that followed the discovery...