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Forest kindergarten

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Re: Forest kindergarten

#11

Post by sephlietz »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

There's one near where I used to live in Chicago. They use a local Forest preserve. Strangely there is a contigent of neighbors who continually try to get the whole thing shutdown because they don't think young kids should be outside like that all the time. They try to complain and say they leave garbage or are noisy or other invented complaints. From what I understand, what they're really upset about is that they ca…

If you're talking about the one at the North Park Village Nature Center, it looks like they were already shut down. :( https://blockclubchicago.org/2019/06/20/preschool-program-ki...

Re: Forest kindergarten

#12

Post by toast0 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #9

We've got our daughter in a similar preschool. She spends 2-3 hours during school days outside in a semi-structured environment. (Ie, there are adults and rules, but the kids are free to negotiate their own games, social interactions, and play.) It's been astounding how well balanced and social all the kids are from that school. I supposed it's anecdata (I only know ~10-15 kids), but there's a lot more awareness and…

> As a parent, it feels impossible to know the right thing to do for your kids.

Being adequate is enough. Chose something that doesn't seem clearly harmful, pay attention for signs of harm, pay attention for signs that it's a bad fit and make a change if it is. Really all you need from preschool is socialization, and some exposure to germ warfare.

What I hoped for my child to get was familiarity and positive associations with the school concept. In my mind, it's more helpful if young people enjoy school and feel it is a place where they can do things well than if they have a lot more academic skills early and have developed a dislike of school.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#13

Post by em-bee »

dfee wrote: post #10
em-bee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate on post-montessori please? how does that look like to you?

I loved the idea of Montessori, and it’s an issue I raised in open discussion at one of the school’s group chats. Basically, in principle it’s great. Children drive themselves and follow what they’re passionate about (with a teacher’s encouragement). If they’ve got a tendency for math, for example, the teacher helps them develop their own intuitions and keeps those pathways open for them. In practice, my son believed…

children under 4 years and zero days weren’t allowed to begin learning numbers

ouch. someone hasn't been paying attention in their training.

there is no hard date to introduce any activity. if children are interested in an activity, they are introduced to it. or to a simpler one that leads up to it. applying a hard date shows lack of understanding of the different speed of childrens development.

if it's not to late i'd read up a bit on the montessori method and confront the teachers about it. they are clearly doing it wrong. i'd also check who certified that school, or where the teachers were trained.

unfortunately, the montessori name is not protected, and anyone school can claim to be montessori, even if they are not.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#15

Post by Waterluvian »

Pfhreak wrote: post #9

We've got our daughter in a similar preschool. She spends 2-3 hours during school days outside in a semi-structured environment. (Ie, there are adults and rules, but the kids are free to negotiate their own games, social interactions, and play.) It's been astounding how well balanced and social all the kids are from that school. I supposed it's anecdata (I only know ~10-15 kids), but there's a lot more awareness and…

I often wonder if there's simply a bias that of course these kids will do well, they come from families where their parents can and will enroll them into special programs.

I'm beginning to be faced with these kinds of decisions with my oldest.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#16

Post by watwut »

dfee wrote: post #10
em-bee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate on post-montessori please? how does that look like to you?

I loved the idea of Montessori, and it’s an issue I raised in open discussion at one of the school’s group chats. Basically, in principle it’s great. Children drive themselves and follow what they’re passionate about (with a teacher’s encouragement). If they’ve got a tendency for math, for example, the teacher helps them develop their own intuitions and keeps those pathways open for them. In practice, my son believed…

The montessory materials I read were not about following passion. It was rather that kids could choose order in which they did educational activities during dat - but in the end all the kids did the same ones. It is more about illusion of control and freedom within limited bounds.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#17

Post by barry-cotter »

toast0 wrote: post #12
Pfhreak wrote: post #9

We've got our daughter in a similar preschool. She spends 2-3 hours during school days outside in a semi-structured environment. (Ie, there are adults and rules, but the kids are free to negotiate their own games, social interactions, and play.) It's been astounding how well balanced and social all the kids are from that school. I supposed it's anecdata (I only know ~10-15 kids), but there's a lot more awareness and…

> As a parent, it feels impossible to know the right thing to do for your kids. Being adequate is enough. Chose something that doesn't seem clearly harmful, pay attention for signs of harm, pay attention for signs that it's a bad fit and make a change if it is. Really all you need from preschool is socialization, and some exposure to germ warfare. What I hoped for my child to get was familiarity and positive associat…

> What I hoped for my child to get was familiarity and positive associations with the school concept.

Why? Any Prussian model school will inure them to ranking, tedium, busywork, being ranked and doing things that seem pointless because an authority figure said to as well as another, whether they begin education in a child centred school or not. It’s not like most metro areas even have a child centred school, whether Sudbury, Montessori, Waldorf or other. They’ll learn what school is actually like on exposure to it and develop associations with it based on that whether they went to a child centred school for a brief period or not. The long run effects of beginning schooling in a humane system will fade and the only long run effects will be a few better years in childhood.

I suppose that’s enough justification by itself.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#18

Post by em-bee »

watwut wrote: post #16
dfee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved the idea of Montessori, and it’s an issue I raised in open discussion at one of the school’s group chats. Basically, in principle it’s great. Children drive themselves and follow what they’re passionate about (with a teacher’s encouragement). If they’ve got a tendency for math, for example, the teacher helps them develop their own intuitions and keeps those pathways open for them. In practice, my son believed…

The montessory materials I read were not about following passion. It was rather that kids could choose order in which they did educational activities during dat - but in the end all the kids did the same ones. It is more about illusion of control and freedom within limited bounds.

it's the freedom to choose within the available options (that is the world as you know it). as kids get older the options expand, and hence learning to make those choices as opposed to taking what is fed to you is really the most important part.

dfee's son was denied that choice, and hence the effect that montessori is supposed to have may not take hold.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#19

Post by barry-cotter »

dfee wrote: post #10
em-bee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate on post-montessori please? how does that look like to you?

I loved the idea of Montessori, and it’s an issue I raised in open discussion at one of the school’s group chats. Basically, in principle it’s great. Children drive themselves and follow what they’re passionate about (with a teacher’s encouragement). If they’ve got a tendency for math, for example, the teacher helps them develop their own intuitions and keeps those pathways open for them. In practice, my son believed…

> I believe that it was a better program than a median program, but I’m not sure if it’s because his peers came from families who could afford to spend time with their children, or if the program itself was better than median.

Doesn’t matter which is true. Early educational interventions fade out universally and we have nothing that effects adult intelligence or conscientiousness which explain pretty much all variation in educational attainment, partly through their effect on SES.

> “Heckman curve” update: The data don’t seem to support the claim that human capital investments are most effective when targeted at younger ages.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/04/06/heckman-cu...

> The Heckman Curve describes the rate of return to public investments in human capital for the disadvantaged as rapidly diminishing with age. Investments early in the life course are characterised as providing significantly higher rates of return compared to investments targeted at young people and adults. This paper uses the Washington State Institute for Public Policy dataset of program benefit cost ratios to assess if there is a Heckman Curve relationship between program rates of return and recipient age. The data does not support the claim that social policy programs targeted early in the life course have the largest returns, or that the benefits of adult programs are less than the cost of intervention.

Re: Forest kindergarten

#20

Post by jacobolus »

sephlietz wrote: post #11
nkrisc wrote: post #8

There's one near where I used to live in Chicago. They use a local Forest preserve. Strangely there is a contigent of neighbors who continually try to get the whole thing shutdown because they don't think young kids should be outside like that all the time. They try to complain and say they leave garbage or are noisy or other invented complaints. From what I understand, what they're really upset about is that they ca…

If you're talking about the one at the North Park Village Nature Center, it looks like they were already shut down. :( https://blockclubchicago.org/2019/06/20/preschool-program-ki...

The complaint is seriously that there is “unstructured play” happening? Heaven forefend!
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