Forest kindergarten is an early childhood education model which emphasises nature immersion, child-led exploration, and unstructured outdoor play time. Typically offered to children between the ages of 3 and 6, forest kindergartens provide preschoolers with the opportunity to learn in a natural environment (think: beach, meadow, or woodland) rather than a traditional four-walled classroom.

Forest kindergarteners can spend anywhere between 50 to 100% of their day outdoors. Whether the weather be rain, shine, or snow, they will be out enjoying the elements.

The global forest school movement has rapidly expanded since its advent in the 1950s. Beginning in Denmark and Scandinavia, forest kindergartens and forest schools can now be found all around the world.

Forest kindergartens take place in undisturbed, “wild” settings. Next to a bubbling creek, in a wide open field, beneath 100 year old trees. By contrast, outdoor time in a school-based kindergarten is usually spent in a conventional playground setting (picture: enclosed fences, stationary climbing equipment, and primarily plastic and metal toys).

Unlike the classroom learning model where each day is scheduled around a strict timetable, the forest kindergarten approach affords a much gentler pace. Here, children have more time to deep dive into their interests and to foster relationships through play. 

Numerous research studies have shown that participation in forest school can lead to improvement in the areas of fine and gross motor skills, physical fitness and stamina, as well as self-confidence and self-esteem. There is also substantial literature to support that forest kindergarten programs positively promote language development, concentration, and independence in young children, while simultaneously nurturing a sense of kinship with the natural world. text goes here

For people who have remained connected to the lands of their ancestral lineages, land-based relationships play an essential role in cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and cultural identity.

Many forest kindergartens have adopted a philosophy of education that is partially informed by this Indigenous worldview. In place-based and land-based pedagogy, land is understood to be a dynamic, animate “teacher” that the children can learn from.

In forest kindergartens, children’s daily access to unstructured outdoor play in wild settings fosters a deep sense of respect, responsibility, mutual care, and reverence for nature. These are life-sustaining values can be found in many Indigenous cultural traditions and contemporary communities around the world.

At Algonquin Island Forest Kindergarten we acknowledge and pay our respects to the past, present, and emerging Indigenous custodians of Mnisiing (the original name for the Toronto Islands) including those of the Mississauguas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendy peoples.

There are a few key difference between outdoor education and forest kindergarten pedagogy.

In outdoor education settings, the focus is on organised learning in an outdoor setting (think: hiking with field guides, canoe trips, ropes courses, and group games). In a forest kindergarten, the focus is on unstructured play in nature (imagine: building tiny dams at the creek, constructing forts with fallen tree branches, doing log rolls down a hill).

In outdoor education programs, there tend to be more defined learning goals and explicit connections to a pre-planned curriculum. In forest kindergarten programs, learning objectives are usually open-ended and the curriculum is most often emergent (as opposed to pre-planned).

Algonquin Island Forest Kindergarten provides Mother Nature-guided learning opportunities for children and families that are Earth-centered and open-ended in scope.