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Comment by teniutza | Hacker News Reader

At the day-care my 3 year old goes to, the children are encouraged to go out and play on a daily basis. The only exceptions are storms and extremely hot days (this does not happen that often in this part of Germany...). This is great for them. They play, explore, breathe fresh air, interact with germs, bacteria.

On the other hand, I'm also sympathetic to the parents who try to shelter their kids, so that they don't get sick. Staying at home these days is not as simple as when we were kids. The pressure to succeed or lack of personnel take their toll in such situations.

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My children (3 and 5) goes to a "nature kindergarten". We live in Denmark. Basically they are not inside if possible. They have a rather large building with rooms for each team, kitchens and whatever you would expect, but they use it as little as possible. Outside, the weather is taken into consideration, so even if it rains, they can play outside without getting wet, if that is what they want (the kids are encouraged to play in the rain), and if it's crazy hot and the sun is baking, they can play outside in the numerous locations setup for shade. They almost always eat their 3 lunchboxes outside. In the winter season, there is a bonfire every morning for warmth and hygge. The key to this kind of kindergarten is enough of the right kind of clothes and footwear. There is even a big forrest inside the kindergarten perimeter with trees they climb and holes they've dug. My children absolutely loves it!

3 lunchboxes?

The convention in this particular kindergarten is that for each meal there is one lunchbox. Meals are usually at 8-9 (optional meal), 11:30 and 14:30. My kids kids usually don't have the first lunchbox since they have just eaten breakfast a half hour to one hour before arriving at the kindergarten at around 8-8:30 and are therefore not hungry, but some kids in the kindergarten is there from around 7-8 to 16-17: and thus packs three lunch boxes. Some actually arrive at 6 in the morning and thus eat 2-3 lunch boxes and a breakfast first thing when they arrive.

Ah that makes sense

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