Kita Kiddi (Zürich)

The physical condition (fitness, strength, endurance) of the children increases when they hop, jump, run over the uneven forest floor, when they climb trees, jump over ditches, balance on logs. Experiences in nature offer a lot of room for the children's joy of movement and discovery. They promote their motor skills.

The forest guarantees the children enough space to live out their imagination and creativity. There is hardly anything prefabricated. The children develop their own games and toys. The "adventure playground" forest is always waiting with new tasks, experiments, observations and ideas.

In the forest, the children can experience many interrelationships sensually and comprehend sensory connections. They experience the change of seasons, they can observe growth processes and get to know natural cycles comprehensively. All senses are stimulated and developed: hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting. - Learning means understanding the world.

Far away from any stimulus overload the children perceive their strengths better and experience their individual possibilities and limits. They find their own "stability". In this way, they playfully develop a strong sense of self-confidence: This is who I am, and this is what I can do.

Above all, role-playing games based on imagination and creativity encourage social play among the children. This in turn promotes social behavior and communication.

In the forest, children are particularly dependent on each other. Group membership, reliability and assistance are important. Many of the children's projects cannot be realized without the help of others. Not to mention that the adventures are not as much fun alone. If everyone contributes their personal skills constructively, an activity becomes a positive experience for everyone.

Spending time in the great outdoors promotes the children's emotional and mental balance through the alternation between exciting action and meditative calm.

The careful handling of every kind of life is experienced and learned. Children who develop an ethical relationship to nature at an early age are likely to consider their environment worthy of love and protection later in life: "what I love I protect".

Summary:

In the forest, children learn nature-related content through play, train their motor skills, test their limits, draw courage, and grow beyond themselves. They can give free rein to their creativity, can sink into fairy tales and mythical stories, and sensually experience nature in the cycle of the year. They feel the play of light and shadow, the different influences of the weather, they experience the rustling of the leaves and the smell of the forest floor. At the same time, experiencing nature contributes to the formation and strengthening of personality and the promotion of social skills.