Forest kindergartens – an idea from the 60s with the principle “back to nature”. A crazy idea from tree huggers or a valid concept for basic pedagogy? The last years have seen a huge increase in new openings (there are more than 500 forest kindergartens in Germany today), which leads to the conclusion that forest kindergartens apparently do have more valid arguments than ecological education. Nonetheless the concept is still met with some skepticism in our society – especially from politicians. Probably the strongest assumption against the concept is that children did not learn enough and were not prepared well enough for school in forest kindergartens. Especially since the PISA/studies, kindergartens have been under an enormous amount of pressure from media and politics – leading parents to believe that they need to start having their child learn a foreign language at age three and start with preparations for school. Many people have reservations against forest kindergartens in this respect. But how sensible and child/appropriate is this early learning? What does childhood look like today and what do children need? What does the concept of the forest kindergarten have to offer? How do children from forest kindergartens fare in secondary schools? To investigate this, children who visited forest kindergartens and their mothers were interviewed. The book first gives an overview over preschool education, i.e. the developmental psychological as well a social situation of children in Germany and the resulting requirements for early education. Furthermore, the concept of forest kindergartens will be explored theoretically as well as in practice, in order to evaluate whether it is a promising format for early education.