Outdoor preschool takes root on Vashon Island
A preschool on Vashon Island is held completely outdoors, rain or shine, and it's so popular that it has a waiting list.
KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Rowan Marceau-Roache, left, 3, and Boots Van Spronsen, 5, find a seat in their preschool "classroom" — a 5-acre Vashon Island site. Kids are always outside at Cedarsong Nature Preschool, where the goal is an introduction to nature. Assistant teacher Karen Olsen is at right.
All put in a Thermos of hot water brought to the remote site by teacher Erin Kenny.
This is tea, which the preschoolers will drink at snack time.
That these youngsters, ages 3 to 5, can identify the plants and know which are edible may seem incredible. But not to Kenny, who created Cedarsong Nature Preschool two years ago.
It's completely outdoors. The school's motto: "Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls."
The Vashon Island school is so popular it has a waiting list. Only once in the two years Kenny has run the school has a class gone indoors. That was in the
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School districts across the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June.
As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half-century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts plan to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.
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