Continue reading from the Õpetajate Leht (in Estonian). Õpetajate Leht is an Estonian weekly newpaper targeted first of all to teachers at all educational levels and professionals working with education policies.
Newspaper Õpetajate Leht: "Children, outside!"
Photo: Carl Crafoord/norden.org
"I remember when a friend of mine moved to Northern Norway years ago and told me about nursery schools there – how the children played outside and hiked in the mountains regardless of the weather, dined around a bonfire and took their afternoon naps in sleeping bags in tipis – it sounded like a fairytale," writes Tiina Vapper in the Estonian weekly newspaper Õpetajate Leht of 16 January. "The concept of forest nursery schools is now establishing itself in Estonia as well. Two forest nursery schools started working last autumn, one in Tartu, the other in Muuga."
In February and March of last year, with support from the Nordic Council of Ministers, a group of active mothers visited the forest nursery schools in Sweden and Norway. In September, a forest nursery school was opened in Tartu, where a group of parents from the non-profit organisation Lapsed Õue are testing the forest nursery school system as a pilot project on their own children.