Read an article about Outdoor Kindergartens in Norway. For questions 1 – 8, choose the answer (a, b, c or d) which you think fits best according to the text. An alternative choice for the blooming generation! Norway is one of the most sophisticated and modern countries in the world, yet more and more Norwegian parents are going back to nature when it comes to raising their offspring. Thanks to Norway’s Outdoor Kindergartens, working mums and dads now have the option of having their children looked after in the great outdoors. The north of Norway falls inside the Arctic Circle, which means the country is in darkness for two months a year and winter temperatures often fall below zero. In spite of the tough climate, there are hundreds of Outdoor Kindergartens all over the country. These kindergartens have the same content and tasks as Norway’s conventional kindergartens, but their teaching methods vary greatly. Set on the seashore at the foot of a fjord, Tusseladden Outdoor Kindergarten is surrounded by the most beautiful landscape imaginable. Heidi Burang is an outdoor group leader at this school. She claims that in a world where children are bombarded with computers and electronic games, it’s essential to motivate children to want to go outdoors. It’s just as important, however, to occupy them creatively once they are out, she says. Motivation has a huge role to play in the education of all children, even more so when children face difficult circumstances. As a result, group leaders like Heidi encourage children to explore nature and their own boundaries, rather than spending most of the day imposing boundaries on them. At most kindergartens, children are brought inside when it rains or if it’s cold. Not in Tusseladden. Norwegians have a saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.’ Children at outdoor kindergartens arrive in the morning dressed in several layers of warm clothing with a waterproof all-in-one on top, Wellington boots, a hat, and gloves. They are all set for a day in nature, even in the lowest of temperatures. If the Kindergarten Act states that they have to make certain constructions, for example, a boat, these youngsters head for the shore. In most countries, this kind of construction would be made with material specially designed for children in a controlled environment. At Tusseladden the children are introduced to real tools such as hammers and saws and, with the assistance of the group leader, use these tools to construct their very own boats using driftwood found along the shore. Once they are ready, their boats are launched into the water to test how well they float. Heidi Burang says that being outdoors for this kind of activity has the advantage of allowing children, who live in the ‘here and now’, to try and test things immediately. Outdoors they can even dig up potatoes in the school garden for their lunch. This is more than just a fun activity to reward them as the group leader can exploit it to teach them about shapes, numbers, cultivating without pesticides and about how previous generations cultivated crops. Having dug up potatoes, the children – with the help and close supervision of a group leader – light a fire outdoors in order to cook them for lunch. This may seem like an extremely dangerous, if not irresponsible, thing to allow a five-year-old to do. Heidi, however, has a different perspective. She explains that danger is all around us. We can’t escape it so we should help children to manage risk and not try to eliminate it. When most parents ask their preschoolers What did you do at school today?’, they don’t expect to be told that their child hiked to the peak of a 500 m mountain. Yet this is exactly what the older children at Tusseladden Outdoor Kindergarten embarked on today. Through rain and a cold north wind, these incredible youngsters made it to the top whilst mastering invaluable skills for life such as perseverance, orientation, being adaptable, looking after their own rucksack, and helping out others. An added bonus is that walking on uneven terrains, like the surface of the mountain they climbed, helps to improve their motor skills. Norwegian children are born into one of the world’s wealthiest countries. With the help of outdoor kindergartens, they are shown from a very early age that the most valuable things in life are found in nature. Norwegian parents have the choice to __. What does their in the last sentence of paragraph 4 refer to? Tusseladden Outdoor Kindergarten is __. Heidi Burang expresses concern about __. Why does the writer quote a Norwegian saying in paragraph 4? What aspect of Tusseladden Outdoor Kindergarten is similar to other Norwegian kindergartens? What does the description of children lighting a fire tell us? According to the writer, mountain climbing can teach children __.