KIDS GONE WILD.
Reporter:
Amos Roberts and Alex De Jong
4-year-old Nicola Towns is joining her kindergarten friends in the forest. But they're not on an excursion. This forest is their kindergarten.
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): Look, troll ears! There are trolls in this forest. Look, the trolls took their ears off!
It's freezing today - only five degrees. But even when it's raining, snowing, or minus 20 degrees, you'll find these children playing and learning outside.
BOY (Translation): It’s a millipede!
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): They live under here in winter. Insects look after themselves by living under bark.
It might sound extreme but it's not unusual in Denmark, where 10% of the preschools - about 500 of them - are forest kindergartens. They're run by pedagogues like Johan Laigaard - someone with a university degree in human development.
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): Oh no! What do we do now? Do you jump down?
CHILD (Translation): No, we run!
JOHAN LAIGAARD (Translation): You just run!
REPORTER: You have a lot of visitors come from overseas to see how you do things here? How do they react?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: They are thinking, "What are we doing?" And when do we learn to go to school, and why there's no fence. And, wow!
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN, OUTDOOR EDUCATION SPECIALIST: It's important for young children to learn what it is to maybe be cold, what it is to be wet. Um, and survive that. My name's Jane Williams-Siegfredson, I came to Denmark over 20 years ago and was amazed at the outdoor things that young children were doing, and I now live and work here. .
Jane's the author of a book in on forest education in Denmark. She's brought me to a forest kindergarten near her home outside Viborg.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: He's in the tree and it is only a very thin sapling tree. It's very, very wobbly. It takes an awful lot of balance to sit in that and use both hands at the same time. In an ordinary playground they wouldn't have the opportunities to develop those physical skills.
Jane runs outdoor education workshops for teachers and carers from around the world, including Australia. While we've been talking the kids have been moved onto their next activity.
REPORTER: Are you going to tell me this isn't as dangerous as it looks.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: No no, it's not dangerous, the children have learned how to use the knives properly. So it is not seen as some kind of weapon. It is a tool for doing something, such as whittling. I think many cultures like to wrap their children up in cotton wool. I don't think that's a lack of love here for the children by their parents. They see it in a different way. That, in fact, children should have the chance to, to be free.
MATTY: Going up higher and higher.
REPORTER: So what's your approach to safety here?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: You have to use your brain and if you trust that the kids, they can take care of themselves.
REPORTER: Matty, are you afraid of anything?
MATTY: Nothing at all.
REPORTER: I was watching this boy climb to the very top of the tree, other boys hitting the log with a stick, very close to each other. I couldn't see you or anyone else...
JOHAN LAIGAARD: I was standing up there and I saw it too.
REPORTER: You saw it.
JOHAN LAIGAARD: Yes.
REPORTER: You weren't worried?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: No. That's a part of the play almost every day and they, and they learn. And they learn to be careful. Sometimes they hit, yes, they got a little accident. But that's the way to learn. Only once I have to drive to the hospital with a boy with a big injury. In 17 years. So I'm not worried.
REPORTER: And what was the injury?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: It was a parent who drove over a foot of a kid.
The world's first forest kindergartens were founded in Scandinavia in the early '50s. Today they're also popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Some locations are more challenging than others. Johann's kindergarten sits less than a 100 metres from fjord, but there aren't any fences, because they're not needed.
REPORTER: Why do you stop here, Carl?
CARL (Translation): We’re not allowed to go here. You need to have a pedagogue from up there before you go across.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: I think one of the big things that I see here is the amount of trust that there is in Denmark, that there is no formal inspection of kindergartens. There's no-one that comes round and checks up that you're doing what you should be doing.
But how easy is it for parents like Nicola's mother, Nadia, to trust the pedagogues and their own kids?
NADIA TOWNS, MOTHER: I know my sister, she's so, "They can run down to the water?" I was like, "Yeah, but they don't do that." They know where they're allowed to go to, they don't...
REPORTER: You trust them? Do you think a lot of it is based on trust?
NADIA TOWNS: A lot.
MOTHER: I must say I'm happy that I'm not down here during the day because I'm a bit worried when Miele crawls into the top of the tree.
REPORTER: So you're happy that you can't see it?
MOTHER: Yeah. Yeah, I am.
At Nadia's house, I meet her husband, Paul. He's English. Danish forest kindergartens came as a big culture shock.
PAUL TOWNS: In England, kids can be harmed in any way, you know, falling out of a tree or something like that. They won't allow it.
There are only a handful of forest kindergartens in the UK. The US only opened its first one in 2007, Australia, five years ago.
REPORTER: What do you think it is about den nark that they can get away with it?
PAUL TOWNS: It is hard to explain. I really don't know what it is about the Danes, it’s just a relaxed frame of mind that they have got about everything.
One of the main reasons Nadia and Paul have sent both Nicola and her six-year-old sister Jessica to a forest kindergarten is that the virtual world is distracting the girls from the natural one.
PAUL TOWNS: As soon as they come home they want to play the iPad. That's what they want to do. That worries us. So we try to encourage them to go outside and play more.
Surely, not everyone's convinced about the value of an outdoor education. This is Jessica's primary school. I've come here because I thought the teachers might be concerned at how kids from a forest kindergarten struggle to adapt in a classroom.
REPORTER: Do you know any difference between her and kids who come from normal kindergartens?
PIA NIELSEN, TEACHER: Not at all. They are all prepared to go to school. My own son went to forest kindergarten.
REPORTER: Oh, really?
PIA NIELSEN: Yeah.
REPORTER: So you never had any worries about how he would go at school...
PIA NIELSEN: No, not at all.
REPORTER: What do you think about the idea that the children should be using their time in kindergarten to start to learn some reading, some writing, some maths, to get ready for school?
JOHAN LAIGAARD: I think this is work spoiled because they are not ready. You have to learn them to be interested in learning.
Over the last 20 years, the number of outdoor kindergartens in Denmark has roughly doubled. And now, the forest gospel is spreading. Even schools are looking to take the class outdoors.
JANE WILLIAMS-SIEGFREDSEN: Now there's a lot of research being done that shows that children are less stressed, that children concentrate more, that children are ill less often. That their motor development is far, far better for being outdoors than indoors.
JOHAN LAIGAARD: And a lot of teachers is, "A-ha!" Getting, "Yes. Oh, it works!" So I'm, I'm happy.
Video journalist
AMOS ROBERTS
Story producer
ALEX DE JONG
Additional camera
MARIANNE BOROWIEC
Story editor
DAVID POTTS
Translations
VIBEKE SYBRANDT
SEBASTIAN RASMUSSEN
KARINA KOLD
Title music
VICKI HANSEN
23rd February 2016