KinderForest By Jason Boose

KinderForest
By Mister Jason

Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it.
- Jean Piaget

As a former librarian, I like order, learning facts, and knowing things. I used to work in tall glass buildings, teaching others the ‘right way.’ As an observer of my own children, I came to understand a basic principle of teaching that has nothing to do with being correct. And after working with young children for some time now, I know that teaching is about standardizing the world and creating efficient ways to measure our knowledge. I love teaching and teachers. But KinderForest is not about teaching. What we do in the woods is inventing. We are experiencing. We are painting the primer for all the colors of the world.

Explaining the ‘right way’ has limited value in early childhood. Safety, hygiene, and basic manners come to mind as areas where teaching is helpful. Unfortunately, much of early childhood is filled with activities that have a right and wrong answer, homogenize a child’s process, and measure their success in ways that limit children before they even begin experimenting. Schools are designed to have an efficient system and create measurable results. What we do in KinderForest isn’t measured, and most of the time, we don’t use the most efficient methods. This is all part of the plan to foster invention in a child’s mind.

We begin each day with attire to meet the whims of the weather. We strive to spend as much time outdoors as possible every KinderForest day, rain or shine or snow. Once we make our way outside, we have morning snack, songs, a story, and then we take a meandering walk through the woods to a play spot where the children can invent. The best days at KinderForest are those where the children feel free to create their day. Sometimes they choose to explore a mud flow next to the bog-log bridge, or see how close they can get to the nesting pairs of mallard ducks along the the riverbank, or discover the perfect stick for making a swooshing sound through the air, and find strength inside themselves as they make the walk back up from the river for lunchtime. At the end of each morning session, we do the mud dance, where I hum off-key jig to knock some of the mud off our boots. Then as we return indoors, we guess what might be for lunch with our noses. There’s not much ‘teaching’ in KinderForest but these children sure learn a lot about the world.