Kindergarten Visit:

On visiting the children’s kindergarten we arrived by boat, which was approximately a 6-8 minute passage. Once on land we made our way to a small camp where the children and their teachers were based. We began by introducing ourselves and explaining why we were there.

We were given the opportunity to observe the children, watching how they explored and learned freely. At the camp the children split into groups according to gender, allowing the girls and boys freedom to do their own thing. This proved interesting to observe since there was a noticeable difference in activities.  The difference being the girls focused on picking plants and finding small bugs around the outside of the stream whilst in contrast, a large proportion of boys engaged themselves in tree climbing. The teachers, unlike the standard safeguarding approach in England, did not focus on the potential dangers of this activity but were fully aware of their activities. When I asked the teacher about how they controlled such situations she replied that their view was that they have to learn for themselves their personal limits rather than imposing limits on them and that usually, the children are very good at this and know when to stop. However, having said this there was an unwritten limit, so if she saw them going far too high she would instruct them to stop. This was so weird for me, seeing children engage freely in risky activities, since I come from a country where risk is greatly minimised to the point where we are overly safety conscious and therefore activities are limited. If a teacher in England let her pupils explore this freely and shared with the parents their monitoring of the children there would be a law case against the school in terms of safeguarding issues, since sadly we live in a blame-based culture. Which on reflection is startling, since this type of teaching and learning does not exist in England, or in a lot of other countries, making it very unique to Norway in terms of their teaching methods and reflects their underpinning cultural values.

Being there to observe this first hand was amazing to see and demonstrated just how capable children are, even at such an early age. Further, each child had their own bag packs and kit! Consequently they were almost independent during their little day trips which was very impressive. Again, in England we tend to do everything for them which has a negative impact in that it nurtures an over reliance on adults, whereas this approach offers an excellent start in terms of developing self-reliance.

This has opened up for me a whole new way of thinking when it comes to child development and has challenged my current thinking.  I know that this experience will stay with me and will influence decisions in terms of how I would bring up my own children and about our/my approach in the outdoor education sector as a leader of learning.   Therefore, this was a highly valuable learning experience on many levels.