Beyond Recess: How to Explore the Forest as a Kindergarten Class

By Emily Hanford, American Radio Works

American kids are spending less time outside. Even in kindergarten, recess is being cut back. But in one small town in Vermont, a teacher is doing something different: one day a week, she takes her students outside - for the entire school day.

It’s called Forest Monday.

Kindergarten teacher Eliza Minnucci got the idea after watching a documentary about a forest school in Switzerland where kids spend all day, every day, out in the woods.

“I would do that in a heartbeat,” she thought to herself. Then reality hit. “We’re in a public school in America,” she says. “That’s not going to happen.”

But her principal at the Ottauquechee School in Quechee, Vermont surprised her by saying: try it.

Every Monday morning, the kids suit up for a day outdoors. Rain or shine - even in the bitter cold - they go out. They head to the woods next to their school where they’ve built a home site with forts and a fire pit.

OBSERVATION

First thing, the kids go to their “sit spots.” These are designated places – under a tree, on a log - where each kid sits quietly, alone, for 10 minutes. Their task is to notice what’s changed in nature since last week.

“There’s more moisture in the air,” says a boy named Orion Bee. It’s early April on the day I visit, and the snow is starting to melt, making the air feel slightly soggy. With that astute observation, Orion picks up a rock and starts banging it on the ground. It seems he’s had enough quiet time for now. And lucky for him, playtime is next.

PLAYING AND LEARNING

Kids run around and do all kinds of things they’re not allowed to do at school, like yell and throw things. Down by the stream, two boys are working together to build a dam. One boy, pushing with all his might, tries to move a downed tree onto the dam. “We can roll it!” insists the other boy. They push and push, to no avail. Eventually, one of the boys realizes he can get leverage using the tree’s branches. Teacher Eliza Minnucci is standing about 20 feet away, watching.

“We’re supposed to study force and motion in kindergarten,” she says, noting how the boy just had a real world experience of that when he figured out how to use the branches to move the tree. “Outside offers so much,” she says. “It is sort of the deepest and widest environment for learning that we have.”

Minnucci worries that U.S. schools have become too focused on academics and test scores and not enough on “non-cognitive” skills, such as persistence and self-control. There is increasing attention on the importance of these skills, but Minnucci doesn’t think traditional school is set up to teach them very well.

Forest Mondays, however, provide lots of opportunities.

“I see some amazing grit,” she says with a smile, looking over at the boys who have successfully moved the downed tree onto their dam.

NATURE’S TEACHING TOOLS

There are formal lessons in the forest too. After playtime, the kids visit learning stations. At one they paint using natural materials. At another they make letters out of sticks. One girl struggles to make an “S.”

“I’m going to get some curvy sticks!” she declares. Soon realizing that curvy sticks are hard to come by, she comes up with the idea of making a backwards “Z” instead.

“Kids are so resourceful out here,” says Minnucci. “In the classroom, we chunk everything into small pieces. We teach them discrete skills and facts and they put it together later. That’s a good way to learn, but it’s not the way the world works,” she says. “I like giving them the opportunity to be in a really complex place where they need to think about how to build a dam with a peer and at the same time think about staying dry and staying warm.”

GROUND RULES

There are very few rules in the woods. Take care of yourself, take care of others, don’t wander too far away; that’s pretty much it. The goal is to let kids experience independence and help them learn the self-regulation skills that are so important to becoming a successful adult. Minnucci points to a kid sitting in the stream.

“It’s 33 degrees out. He’s sitting in water. And he’s going to figure out whether that becomes uncomfortable or not,” she says. “I don’t need to make a rule for him. He’s going to figure that out. This is a place where he can learn to take care of himself.”

There are plenty of adult eyes making sure kids stay safe. Grants pay for an additional forest day teacher. And most Mondays, there’s at least one parent volunteer.

“I think it’s a really great idea that they get the kids out,” says a dad, Chris Cooper. “They’re able to explore and figure things out on their own.”

And what do the students think? "We get to play and we don't have to stay seated forever," says kindergartner Jacob Tyburski.

When Minnucci started this forest school experiment two years ago, she knew it would be good for the rowdy boys who clearly need to run around more than the typical school day offers.

What she didn’t expect is how good it would be for the kids who can sit still and “do” school when they’re 5 years old. She gives the example of a boy last year.

Inside the classroom, he was one of her best students. But when he got outside and kids were climbing a tree, he couldn’t get very high. “I think he was a little surprised to not be meeting his peers’ ability,” says Minnucci.

Then, partway up the tree, he fell. And got a bit scraped up. “I felt terrible,” Minnucci says. “I thought, ‘Oh this poor guy. He failed.’”

But two weeks later, when the kids were climbing the tree again, he looked over at them. “I want to try the tree,” he said.

“And he went to the tree and he got higher than he’d been before and he was beaming,” says Minnucci. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this good, this is good!’ This is a kid who may have gone so far before he met challenge that he wouldn’t have known what to do when he got there.”

Kids who are good at school need to understand there’s more to life than acing academics, says Minnucci. And students who aren’t excelling at the academic stuff need to know there’s value in the things they are good at. Doing school in the forest offers “something really important” to everyone, she says.

Clearly there’s a lot students are learning in the forest. But what about standardized test scores? That’s the bottom line for schools these days.

Minnucci says scores went up more last year than any other year she’s been teaching. She’s quick to point out there could be lots of reasons for that.

She didn’t set out to prove that one day a week in the forest would improve academic achievement. But it didn’t hurt. She says what her students gain from the experience might not be measurable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

Her principal, Amos Kornfeld, agrees. He says schools are being forced to think about everything in terms of data and measurable outcomes, but he doesn’t need test scores to tell him forest kindergarten is working.

When the kids come back from the woods, they look happy and healthy. “Schools need to be focusing on that too,” he says.

Emily Hanford is an education correspondent for American Radio Works. Listen to the American RadioWorks podcast for more about forest schools, including a visit to a sixth grade class that does forest days. Check out the weekly Forest Monday blog created by the kindergartners in Quechee, Vermont. Learn more about setting up a forest kindergarten.

A version of this story originally appeared on NPR.org.