Staying with the whole “kids-are-trouble” theme that I am on today, I saw this article on The Guardian a few days ago about a pre-school in Britain that is run completely outside. That is to say, the children stay outside in all weather, all day long, and never go indoors. The idea is to get the kids in touch with nature of course:

“When they graduate to primary school, alumni of the Secret Garden can expect to be expert in poisonous fungi and able to spot dangerous yew berries or foxgloves, the flowers that contain the toxin digitalis, at a hundred paces. ‘They know what poisonous means, and they really do avoid it. They learn so quickly.'”
“In a normal nursery you might have to learn about shapes, but these children know the difference between an oak tree and a birch tree, which is a lot more complex than a square and a circle…”

So, the pre-schoolers learn to identify the poisonous plants, eh? That’s a recipe for disaster alright. Generally, this is pretty neat especially since the weather there is not exactly great. It wouldn’t be the same here in Canada of course since the temperature would most certainly create little tyke-cicles in February. Still, I’m thinking that the hours spent outdoors during the day must make for some absolutely exhausted kids come bedtime, and that’s exactly what we would need to take the edge off the Cael-strom some days.