Welcome to the Cockkey Ride Home for Friday, August 6th, 2021. I'm Jackson Bird. Today, what are forest schools and the science behind why gardening can make you feel happy and peaceful? Plus, the Perseid meteor shower is happening in just a few days,

and the co-creator of the Oxford Astrozynica vaccine has been immortalized as a Barbie doll.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

So, when I was in Santa Fe last month, I met up with a friend who has a preschooler,

and as we caught up about what our experiences had been like throughout the pandemic,

he mentioned a childhood education philosophy I had never heard of before,

that's not exactly new, but has been growing in popularity recently and is

kind of perfect for our extended pandemic era. It's called Forest School. Started in

Scandinavia in the 1950s and beginning in the U.S. in the 60s, these schools without walls

take mostly preschool-aged children out into nature all day and let them explore with varying degrees of loose instruction.

A 2019 New York Times article points to some of the benefits of forest schools, including improved confidence, resiliency, and motor skills, as well as, quote,

giving youngsters lessons in how to be

ecologically conscious stewards of the environment, said Dr. Patty Bailey, an assistant professor of

early childhood education at the University of Maine Farmington, such as compassion toward plants and

animals, the importance of picking up litter, and how to garden. Spending meaningful time outdoors can also strengthen a child's foundation for literacy

even before she's taught how to spell a single word, said Bailey.

Listening to an identifying bird and other nature sounds, for instance, can prepare her to

recognize basic word sounds, end quote.

And while there haven't been too many large-scale longitudinal studies

on forest schools in particular, we do have decades of research on the pros and punitive cons

of play-based learning, as well as spending time in nature. Now, that said, there are, of course,

some cons and critiques of this forest school method, especially as it grows in popularity.

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