What did you do at school today? We played outside all day and loved it!

ALMOST 100 small children are to get a proper taste of the outdoors when they start pre-school next month.

For they will be attending the country’s only ‘al fresco’ pre-schools where all ‘lessons’ are held outside.

Among the fun activities at the Crann Support Group pre-schools are counting stones in the rain, making pies from muck and water, chopping wood to make bows and arrows, and growing flowers.

Crann chief executive Marie Daly said such pre-schools were a response to society’s tendency to ‘bubblewrap’ children instead of letting them flourish. ‘We bubblewrap our kids because we’re afraid they are going to fall but that’s how they learn. If they climb a tree, they know themselves to only go a certain height,’ said Ms Daly.

‘We are known in Europe as a bubblewrap country and we have to start letting children be children again. It’s the mindset of parents that we have to change.

‘Here at the pre-schools, the kids learn to use real hammers and saws under supervision. They think for themselves how many tyres and seats they’ll need to make a bus and count them out themselves. They make their own choices.

‘There are other pre-schools where children are outside some of the time but, as far as I’m aware, we are the only preschools in Ireland that the children are totally outdoors all the time.’ The initiative was started by the group with only nine children at its Navan school in Co. Meath in 2011. This has now grown to 42 children and now an extra 58 who will start in two other outdoor centres in Ballivor and Trim.

‘The children go out all day in all weathers, apart from a full-blown storm when we would have to take them in for safety reasons,’ added Ms Daly.