Go out and play: Preschools try to kick the screen habit

Young children are spending more time indoors looking at screens, less time in nature, writes Karen D'Souza on EdSource.

Photo: Berkeley Forest School

“Outdoor nature-based learning is vital for young children's health, development, and education,” according to a report from the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).  “Increased screen time and reduced exposure to nature are linked to serious health problems, such as obesity, diabetes, hyperactivity, stress, asthma, and allergies.”

Playing outside in the natural world helps children develop longer attention spans, say advocates. "One study of 562 Norwegian preschoolers found a link between time spent outdoors and sharpened executive functioning, which includes attention and short-term memory," writes D'Souza.

However, low-income urban children may not have access to safe outdoor spaces.

During the pandemic, outdoor or "forest" preschools became more popular, D'Souza writes, citing a survey by the Natural Start Alliance. But few urban children have access to these nature-centered learning experiences.

A toddler leaves a tent to play in the snow at a child-care program near Oslo. Photo: Jackie Mader/Hechinger Report

Norway's preschools -- available to children one years old and up -- stress outdoor play, writes Hechinger's Jackie Mader. The oil-rich country heavily subsidizes the cost.

Preschoolers "ski, sled, swim, canoe, climb rocks and rest in hammocks" at Sylvia Lorentzen's two child-care centers near Oslo, writes Mader. "Around age 4, they learn how to safely use a knife. Then they huddle together outside, whittling wooden figures out of sticks to practice. At 5, they are cutting logs with a saw and building fires."

When it's cold, they bundle up and play in the snow or splash in the mud puddles.

Compared to Americans, "Norwegians have a much higher risk tolerance for children’s play," Mader writes. She saw preschoolers chase each other with brooms, fall from tree branches and stand on swings.

“We allow them to experience, and if they fall down, so what?” Anne Gro Stumberg, a lead kindergarten teacher at a program in Oslo, said. There have been no serious injuries.