Wood Kindergarten

I'VE been reading up on the concept of wood kindergartens, also known as outdoor preschools or forest schools, where the vast majority of the time is spent outdoors in the woods. This idea originated in Scandinavia and is catching on quickly across northern Europe but has apparently not yet made it over the Atlantic to the States, let alone to our corner of Atlanta. Never mind, we are doing our best to replicate the experience on a very small family-based scale. I wouldn't say we're outside *most* of the time, but certainly every day, regardless of the weather, we spend at least an hour or two in the great outdoors.

Emma was eager to try out her new child-sized rake, so today we bundled up and headed into the garden to rake leaves, jump in them and gather them up by the armful to make leaf snow. Emma also discovered with delight that with a bit of help she can climb a tree in our garden. We started to hammer in nails to make a little step (don't worry, the tree's already dead) but ensuing darkness caused us to postpone that to another day and head inside for hot chocolate.