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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We sent our kid to a preschool like this during the height of Covid. We were grateful for a spot.

My one reservation based on my experience is this: is the outdoor focus due to a belief in maximizing kids time outside, or is it based on Covid paranoia? Not Covid cautiousness, which I get, but paranoia?

The reason I mention this is that while outdoors is AWESOME for kids, it is important to have a functional indoors space that they are willing to use when the weather, or the kids, require it. Our school would avoid indoor time at all costs. This meant that they often did outdoor time through freezing rain (we sent the kids bundled with rain gear on top), would do outdoor snack when mosquitos were biting the kids over and over, did outdoor story time when construction was pounding down the street, and so on. It felt like the school itself was terrified of bringing the kids indoors for any reason except using the bathroom. Even outdoors, all kids and caregivers wore masks.

Obviously this was during a different time when fear around Covid was at it's height and a lot was unknown. Which is why we stuck it out. But I would not do it again unless I could see how the school had re-embraced indoor time when it is necessary.

Spending time outside is awesome. If that's the main goal, the school will likely bring the kids inside when the situation merits it, which is good. But if the outdoor focus is driven by fear or paranoia around illness, that could lead to weird decision-making. Just keep this in mind.[/quote]

This sounds like the preschool where I worked and I left primarily because of the paranoia.

Thankfully, they are now back indoors but spending more much time outdoors than they used to.

As a teacher in that environment, the outdoor time did allow us to become very creative and we did things with the kids that we never did before - we really let them play in the mud and rain and get filthy dirty.  It was great when it was warm and hypothermia was not a concern.  We painted snow one day.  We had kids shoveling snow.  There was one day we had chunks of ice on our tables and the kids played "air hockey!"  It was amazing watching their creativity bloom.  I developed a new appreciation for a sunny, low humidity 25 degree weather - it wasn't cold as long as you had the right outdoor clothing.  We did have structured time and a schedule.

If I were a parent, I would ask what they do on the pouring down days when it is 50 degrees or below.  Those were the worst days.  We couldn't keep stuff dry and it became difficult to do anything except free play.   We also didn't want anyone sitting still because of hypothermia (I'm totally serious.). I had a waterproof coat that goes down to my ankles, waterproof pants, waterproof lined boots, wool long underwear, a down coat that went under my rain coat and a battery heated vest.  On those rainy days I still became chilled after about an hour in the rain.  I have PTSD just thinking about it.[/quote]

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