Kindergarten outside? Yes, indeed. It's part of a growing worldwide trend toward outdoor education. The schools are called forest kindergartens. The numbers are small so far in the U.S., but the idea is well established in Europe, with schools in Scotland, England, and Switzerland. By far the most such schools are in Germany, which has more than 400 forest kindergartens. Some schools feature several hours of outdoor schooling. This is certainly the case with the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs. Children there will be venturing out on the nearby Hemlock Trail to learn more about the natural world. Some lessons are focused on nature; others are academic topics delivered in a natural setting. In all cases, students are active-not sitting at desks or on mats on the floor but walking, running, jumping, solving problems like how to get the mud off the bottoms of their shoes before their parents find out. Seriously, the focus is on activity at these schools. Studies have shown that children's immune systems actually get stronger after all of the outdoor activity, and that graduates of forest kindergartens show a higher ability to learn when they progress through their academic careers. Other schools are all outdoors, all the time. This is the case with the Cedar Song Nature School, on Vashon Island, Washington. Students at this school spend their whole three-hour day outdoors, in a private five-acre forest, doing all kinds of physical activities. At these forest kindergartens, students learn science by observing and doing it, learn math by applying it to the natural world around them, learn letters and words by putting them together using sights and sounds. These students learn how to get along with one another, individually and in a group. They also develop healthy levels of self-confidence. Nowadays many children become obese  because of sedentary  activities like watching television and playing video games. These outdoor schools give children chances to learn just as much, if not more, from opening their eyes to the real world around them. The main difference between the Waldorf School and Cedar Song Nature School lies in  _  .
the subjects the activities the outdoor time the teaching methods