There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)

by Linda Åkeson McGurk

Much later, in the 1700s, Swiss-born Renaissance philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau championed the idea that all education of children should be based on play in his groundbreaking treatise Émile, or On Education. “Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it,” he famously wrote, in support of children’s innate ability to learn through their own experiences. Then, in the 1830s, a German teacher and staunch nature lover named Friedrich Froebel picked up on the idea that play is key to children’s physical, moral, and spiritual development. He was so convinced of this idea that he decided to create an early childhood education program that revolved around singing, dancing, gardening, self-directed play, and experiencing nature with all senses. Froebel viewed children as plants who would flower if they were allowed to learn at their own pace, nourished and guided by a teacher. He called his concept “kindergarten”—literally, a child’s garden.