I can still hear my mother and grandmother telling my sister and me, “Go play outside!” We didn’t have to be told twice. My sister and I dressed for the weather and we were ready for anything. We might play jump rope, hopscotch, stoop ball, hide-and-seek, or tag with any friends who showed up. It was unstructured, unsupervised fun in the fresh air. When it snowed, our street in Brooklyn became a winter wonderland. We built snowmen, played in the frosty weather, and threw snowballs at each other. The hours flew by as we romped in the snow with our friends. We didn’t want to come inside! These days, I can recapture some of that amazing, carefree spirit with my work at Kew Kids Forest School . It’s a nature preschool that brings children outside to learn, play, and interact with the natural world. Here, the philosophy is that being out in nature is good for kids . We go into our outside classroom with some ideas in our pocket (like observing the fall forest, building a little house fo...