Presteheia Barnehage
The Barnehage started in 2003 with 3 sections and 13 employees, now Presteheia barnehage has 5 sections and 25 employees and place for 115 children.

The 5 sections:
– Regndrapen
This section has 21 children between the age of 1 and 3 and has 6 employees. (three kindergarden educated, three assistents with no particular education)

– Regnbuen
This section has 14 children also between the age of 1 and 3 and has 4 employees. (two kindergarden educated, two assistents with no particular education)

– Solstralen
This section has 25 children between the age of 3 and 5 and has 6 employees. (Two kindergarden educated, two assistents with no particular education)

– Snokrystallen
This section has 25 children between the age of 3 and 5 and 6 employees. (Two kindergarden educated, two assistents with no particular education)

– Maneskin
This is the section we observed during both our trips. This section has 30 children between the age of 3 and 5 and has 5 employees. (Two kindergarden educated, three assistents with no particular education).
This group meets in the kindergarden everyday but go out in the forest four times a week. Generally they stay outside for +- 4/5 hours. The other four groups also go outside plenty of times but distributes their attention to other subjects a bit more than this group.

The kindergarden has to focus on seven subjects a year, these subjects are:
1. Language, text and communication
2. Body, culture and creativity
3. Art, culture and creativity
4. Nature, enviroment and technique
5. Ethics, religion and philosophy
6. Our neighbourhood and society
7. Number, space and shape

Environmentis the subject the barnehage is focussed on more than the other six subjects, presteheia barngehage thinks the children should be much outside and move their body in the open air.

The way Presteheia barnehage works is giving the children the choice of what they want to do. The teachers use a very small part of the day on a prepared subject which they talk about with the children. Presteheia’s philosophy of teaching is inspired by the theory of multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner). This theory says that everybody has eight intelligences that we use when learning.
The eight intelligences:
– Musical – rhythmic and harmonic
– Visual – spatial
– Verbal linguistic
– Logical – mathematical
– Bodily – kinesthetic
– Interpersonal – intrapersonal
– Naturalistic
– Existential

by focussing on the things children are already capable of doing and using these as a method to learning new things they want to give the children a change to learn by using multiple intelligences.

Observation
On a group of 10 kids there has to be at least one pedagoge. On my visits there were besides a pedagoge also 2 or 3 assistents on the group. The teaching that is being done exists mostly out of learning by doing. In short learning by doing means that the children learn by experiencing something, sharing/proccessing this experience, generalize/apply for a new approach. In my opinion this goes hand in hand with trail and error.
In practice I saw that most of the teaching was about experiencing nature and enjoying it (together).

At school there was a special drying box and the children had special outdoor clothes for different weather types hanging in the hallway. The children take their own backpack and in it their own lunch and drinks. The children always take one meal with them and the other meal is provided by the school.
On our trip the teachers had taken some knives with them that the children could use to make spikes for marsmallows. Besides this there was a special sound book about birds but not much more equipment was used which is quit the difference if you look at what you have in a classic PE classroom in the Netherlands.

Prior to depature the teachers help putting the children in the appropiate clothing and check if all kids take their lunch/drink and look if they are wearing enought clothing. After this the children will go outside and wait at every gate/point till the signal is given by the teacher to move on. If nothing happens the children will just start playing and make the most out of the area they are in. They seem to always be in the mood to play. Something that should be natural to kids this age.

On the way the teacher and assistents constantly count and check the kids and have one teacher +- in the front and one +- in the back. The kids do stray and play while walking but they keep up by their own.
The only thing that really distracts them from the group are edible plants which they seem to give priority to wathever is happening. (second observation; blueberry blossom)

On the two observation trips I went, I did a lot of games with the children and found them easy to approach. In general it took about 5 min before the children started to have interested in us. Language doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem to the children. In general this also meant that they will continue speaking Norwegian to us as if Norwegians for the whole day.

The main part of the first observation day took place at the basecamp of the kindergarden in Jegersberg. Here the children knew where they are allowed to go and where not. Two of the children showed me the border which surrounded their camp and they showed me a small cliff where they could not go beyond a certain rock.
In the surroundings there was a fire place, wood stack, self build shelter, a swinging bridge, a hanging net and a lot of dens made by the children on their own initiative. Besides this the area was ofcourse full of climbing trees, bushes, rocks and other natural areas which can be used to play, hide, balance, jump or relax.

This first observation took place during beautiful weather. We were a big group of strangers but they seemed to really enjoy us (the new toys and playmates). One of the teachers was having his goodbye and thereby had a lot of nice food for on the fire. A joy I wasn’t afraid to hide.
Since all of us were playing with the kids the teachers mentioned ‘they were having an easy day’. They mentioned that normally they would help the children to start and play when unable to do so themselves, but this was not the case for this day with a lot of new people to play with.
One of the teachers was busy learning one of the children about birds and their sound using a special book. The other teachers were at the campfire preparing food or walking around with us. The children were helping them by making spikes for the marsmallows. It was funny to see that the children did not have really strickt rules about all this or a strong sense of danger for the matter. Sometimes other children walked in front of their busy classmates but they seemed to manage themselves. I think handeling a knife should definately be a part of a childhood when being tought friluftsliv. It’s fun and it offers a lot of possibility’s for making tools and creativity. Besides this it gives children a sense of responsibility. But you have to be honoust and see that it’s a thing that can go wrong so attention should be given to pointy things like this. But to me it’s not more dangerous than a pointy branch sticking out of the ground.

I showed some children a firesteel and let them play with it and showed them how to make a fire with it. This piece of equipment was magic to them and they really took an interest and were proud as can be when managing a spark.

On my second observation trip half of the group (the older ones) went on a mindblowing long walk to den omvendte bat. The younger half went for a walk around Ovre Jegersbergvann which is not a small walk for children this small.
We went along with the group that did the walk around Ovre jegersbergvann. In the start of our trip it was raining quit hard but this did not seem to affect the mood of the children in any way. They had a lot of fun and enjoyed exploring the nature surrounding them. After our walk we stayed at the basecamp in Jegersberg for some time but in the end some became cold so then it was time to return to the school building.
This shows that the children are well capable of going out in all kinds of weather types. Only when the weather can be of serious danger the children stay inside, like storms or low temperatures as -10 degrees celcius. I found this very nice to see and to me it proved the idea of us teaching children to be afraid of rain because we take them inside when it’s raining. And as shown here they don’t mind the rain at all at the start of their lives.