Forest Kindergartens in Denmark

I recently stumbled across a video on youtube about forest kindergartens in Denmark. I was really interested in finding out more about how these are organized and to see what they are all about. Within a minute of watching the video, there was a 4 or 5-year-old that looked to have climbed about 10 feet up a wobbly tree. Following that scene there was a bunch of children running around, jumping in water, and sliding down muddy hills all displaying huge smiles of excitement.

 

Forest kindergartens have been around since the 1950’s in Denmark and are also popular in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Currently, in Denmark, about 10% of all kindergartners are enrolled in a forest program. People in Denmark believe this program allows the children the opportunity to be free and let their curiosity run wild. They learn many skills such as how to use a knife, motor skills, and components of the ecosystem. When parents were interview throughout the video many them simply stated that they had a large amount of trust in the program to aid their child’s development.

Some questions that came to my mind throughout this video were how come more schools like this do not exist in Canada? Are parents in Canada too protective of their children?