I had my first day at practicum at my Forest Kindergarten last week. Simply put, it was amazing.
I took the bus to literally the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The bus went on a freeway! I did not even know that buses could go on freeways! I got there a few minutes late, but managed to find the building, since it was the only real building on the street intersecting the freeway off-ramp. The facility is a lot bigger than I was expecting for a forest kindergarten. There is an actual school (the Danish equivalent to elementary and middle school) and attached down a long corridor is the kindergarten and nursery. The babies (0-3) stay at the building, and the children 4-6 in the kindergarten go on different trips every day. We stayed inside for about the first hour. It was a very different experience than my first day last semester. I was amazed at how much Danish I could speak and understand! The kids were even more confused than the kids last semester because I obviously knew some of the language, but kept telling them that I didn't speak Danish. Last semester the kids just thought I was mute or stupid or something. We had circle time where I was introduced and we sang some very cute songs, and then it was time to get ready to go into the forest.
I do not know if I have mentioned the Danish children's play suits yet, but they are basically the equivalent of the Iron Man suit. I am sure he could have just worn one of these playsuits and been fine. Seriously, kids are indestructible when they are wearing these things. They are one piece snow suit-esque things that basically make the child resemble some sort of star shaped pillow and the material on the outside is completely waterproof and magically never tears or gets worn out. I secretly want a play suit, life just seems so much more carefree when you can use a pile of frozen gravel as a slide (something that occurred during our adventure).
After the kids were dressed it was decided that I would go with the "big girls" on their trip. So I left with a pedagog, a helper, and eight 6 year old danish girls into the forest. When I say we went into the forest, we literally went into the forest. We walked to the edge of some wooded area and I thought we would end up at a trail or an opening, but no. We just turned towards the trees and started making out way in. In the city most of our glorious snow is gone, but in the woods there was still quite a bit. We ran down this small hill (since Denmark has no large hills...) and ended up at a frozen pond. Since the weather has not been as cold as before we walked part of the way onto the pond, and then heard some cracking and turned back. I thought that we would continue in a different direction since it looked slightly treacherous to walk around it, but I forgot that the kids were wearing their suits and can do anything. We literally squeezed our way through trees on a snowy slope next to a half frozen pond. The kids loved it. We wondered in the forest for a while until we got to a clearing that had a pile of gravel with a thin coating of ice on it next to a trench. The children decided this was a slide and while I had a heart attack thinking about how dangerous it was they had a blast climbing up and falling down it. We had lunch in the forest and I played a very successful game of "ice cream shop" with the kids where I would walk up to their ice cream stand (a tree, because in a forest that is all there really is) and order outrageous flavors and they would tell me that it cost hundreds of kroner. This is to date the longest conversation I have ever had in pure Danish, and I am proud to know that if I ever in real life order liver patee ice cream and am charge 500 kr for it I can tell them that I want it for free.
The kids started getting cold and grumpy, and I must admit I was too, so we went back after only 4 hours outside. It was explained to me that usually they spent more time outside but because it was so cold they were going back early. I actually left after this instead of staying for the extra 2 hours I had planned on. I was exhausted. Playing in a forest is a lot of work.
Kids and the forest of course made me think of Church Camp, because that is the forest I experienced when I was little and that is the forest that I typically play with kids in. I do not know what type of teacher I will be for the children's classes this year, I may just take the kids into the forest, tell them that Jesus loves them, and then set them loose. I am not sure who would be more surprised in my behavior, the parents with the American childcare mindset who can see the potential risks and want to sue me, or the rest of the counselors that I usually try to micro-organize into following some sort of structured curriculum. I will never look at children the same way after this experience. How can I? Why in American culture do we baby children to such an extreme in every day tasks and taking responsibility for their actions, but expect them to be able to do fractions by second grade? Right now I am enamoured with the Danish system because it is pushing my boundaries of what I "know" about kids, but it has its flaws too. I do not want my children to be held back academically for the trade off of being able to eat with a knife and fork by the time they are 3. Every time I visit a new school or go to practicum I am forced to acknowledge what my priorities are, and what the social norms of the two cultures are telling me my priorities should be. Denmark or America, I hope that I always have a forest I can play in.
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