Freddie and Alastair clambered around their childminder's garden snugly dressed in their unofficial uniform: chest-high waterproof trousers, rainbow braces, thick jumpers and welly boots. Blond and ruddy, the pair, aged two and three, earnestly heaved stones about and wrestled with a wooden wheelbarrow before bounding off for their daily session on the open-air trampoline.

These two boys, wrapped up like seafarers against the squally autumn weather that often drenches their corner of north-east Fife, are about to be pioneers in a nursery education experiment. And it is a project that could make many urban parents fearful.